IBM Launches Last Ditch Effort with Power8 CPUs To Break Intel's x86 Monopoly

You might have heard that IBM has spun off its x86 division to Lenovo, because Extremetech.com reports that just two days later this, IBM has launched a last ditch effort to interruption Intel'due south x86 monopoly in the server sector. I take said time and again that Intel is nothing less than a giant in the silicon world. Enjoying an absolutely perfect monopoly with no competitor in sight, it has effortlessly defeated ARM and Power8 advances alike. However, information technology looks like the terminal (probably) set on wave of the OpenPower consortium is here. IBM Fabrication Plant

IBM and OpenPower Try to Break Intel'southward x86 Server Monopoly One Terminal Time

The reason Sebastian calls this a last ditch endeavor from IBM and OpenPower is because the percent of non-x86 servers is alarmingly low compared to x86 ones from Intel. x86 powered servers more or less consist of 95% of the unabridged market. IBM claims that the new Power8 servers offer xx% more performance per watt than Intel'due south x86 offer but this remains to be seen. IBM's press release criticized the proprietary nature of the x86 ecosystem, calling for an advance to a more open one. It is worth pointing out that IBM is taking the moral high ground in the open vs proprietary boxing when but moments ago (figuratively speaking) information technology was knee deep in proprietary itself.

As for the actual specifics of IBM's new offerings, the mid ranged skus consist of S822L and S824L, which support upto 24 cores (2x Power8 ), and the high-terminate skus consist of the Enterprise E870 and E880, which can back up upto 96 (8x Power8) and 192 (16x Power8) cores respectively. Along with this, 16 terabytes of RAM and 512 lanes of PCIe iii.0 are supported. Seeing that the SMT employed is 8 way, a sixteen chip Power8 server would actually have 1536 threads running at the same fourth dimension.

Now somewhat surprisingly, the midranged S822L and S824L contain hush-hush sauce in their blueprint, while their higher end siblings do not. This not-so-secret sauce is an open-standard, direct connection to the Power8 flake. Players in the OpenPower Foundation can make their own implementation of different products. Remember Nvidia's NV Link? well this is probably information technology. Since Intel's x86 market is somewhat of an in-steerable giant due to its widespread adaption, the Power8 ecosystem can actually startup with more merits than the slow to modify x86 counterpart. Sadly still, this is real life and it would be atleast a few years earlier we know the issue of IBM's latest effort to break into the server market.

Looks like IBM wants a slice of #Intel'south x86 pie. Non to exist a cynic, but i honestly dubiousness information technology will work. http://t.co/cGLHKNZ7Rw

— Usman Pirzada (@usmanpirzada) Oct 5, 2022