David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 8/12/09 wrote:
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>slacker (s@lack.er) on 8/12/09 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 8/12/09 wrote:
>>---------------------------
>>>CPU highlights including AMD's Magny Cours, Fujitsu's SPARC64-VIIIfx, IBM's POWER7,
>>>Intel's trifecta of Moorestown, Beckton/Nehalem-EX and Westmere, and Rainbow Falls
>>>from Sun.
>>
>>Is RWT sending someone to cover these presentations? If so, maybe we can aggregate
>>a list of interesting questions to ask?
>
>I'll be there, some others may be as well. So fire away...
>
>David

Maybe this one is not really a suitable a question for a chip design conference, but what will happen to single threaded execution and software licensing? Yes, chasing the extreme frequency path may not be a the most power efficient, however Power6 proved that coupled with massive memory and I/O bandwidth and multi-threading, it is very capable in terms of performance, and very favourable in terms of enterprise software licensing.

A lot of enterprise softwares are licensed on a per core basis, lead by Oracle and IBM, and we all know how much enterprise software costs: usually a lot more than the underlying hardware. This means that even Power Systems can look expensive, they can be very cost efficient at the end of the day, because you need less licenses to serve the same amount of users, performance needs etc.

With Power7, this advantage looks like going away.