PPC Xserve usersadmins read one sentence 947

ZnU

I forgot to mention that the POWER5+ system I mentioned is in a 1U form factor. IBM also has a 2U 16 core system although that one is targetted at HPC.

Here is a summary (P505Q and P550 uses POWER5+. BTW, the top end IBM server, the P595 uses 2.3Ghz POWER5+ CPUS. The JS21 uses the same processor as PowerMac and is a blade server):

SpecIntrate IBM P505Q 1.65Ghz =70 IBM P550 2.1Ghz = 90 IBM JS21 2.5Ghz = 67.5 Apple PowerMac 2.5Ghz =53.8 Apple MacPro 3Ghz= 115.3

Specfprate IBM P505Q 1.65Ghz =100 IBM P550 2.1Ghz = 149 IBM JS21 2.5Ghz = 58.8 Apple PowerMac 2.5Ghz =47.9 Apple MacPro 3Ghz= 76.4

Also note that SpecInt is not a really good indicator of server workloads as you have indicated. Look at some benchmarks like TPC-C and SAP SD. In fact if you look at the major server related benchmarks, IBM's POWER5+ systems are the leader in every one of them.

And of course, IBM has promised 2X the performance with POWER6 compared to POWER5 in 2007. We'll have to see how that turns out.