Edit: This post is back from the dead. Power still needs more love. They may not be in as many consoles these days. They currently run the fastest supercomputers in the world. The marketwire link no longer works.
Originally posted June 16, 2009 on AIXchange
You catch a TV advertisement for a PC. At the end of the ad, you hear the familiar music, and then see the “Intel Inside” logo. Chances are, any PC you use at home or work displays that same logo. Even non-technical folks recognize that their computers are running an Intel chip. So why isn’t IBM Power Systems — the name and the logo — similarly ubiquitous?
According to a 2006 press release, “microchips based on the Power Architecture are the electronic brain of devices large and small, and are inside automotive safety systems, printers, routers, servers and the world’s most powerful supercomputers.”
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/20213.wss
Most consumers don’t realize that their Nintendo Wii, Microsoft XBOX and Sony Playstations have Power inside. Why doesn’t IBM let the world know that these people are using Power chips in their hardware? It’s a simple message that needs to be delivered.
IBM Power Systems use IBM Power chips instead of x86 Intel chips. They run a range of operating systems, from AIX to IBM i (formerly OS/400 and i5/OS) and Linux on Power (the Linux operating system that’s been compiled to run on Power chips). With a program called Lx86, you can run unmodified x86 Linux binaries so you don’t necessarily need to recompile Linux applications to run on Power Servers.
https://robmcnelly.com/lx86-works-as-advertised/
Power chips are in Mars Rovers and orbiters. They’re in blades, midrange servers and large enterprise servers. They currently running at 4-5 GHz; the bigger machines can have up to 4 TB of memory. A water-cooled Power Systems machine can have up to 448 POWER6 cores per frame.
Raj Desai, vice president IBM Global Engineering Solutions, “With Power-based processors in all three major game consoles, in 50 percent of automobile models worldwide, in 60 percent of the world’s fastest computers, and in 100 percent of the systems on Mars, Power is truly the most versatile computing platform in the solar system.”
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Ibm-NYSE-IBM-757462.html
Power is literally out of this world. That it’s not more aggressively advertised just kills me. Everyone knows about Intel inside. Why isn’t there “IBM inside” or “Power inside”? Hearing about the technology will only make people more interested in it. Instead, many IBM salespeople spend half their time with customers just explaining what Power is.
Most of us love these systems. We work on them all the time, and we already know they’re great. But why isn’t the message reaching the world at large. I’m still waiting to hear the Power jingle and see the logo appear on my game consoles.