Posts by Kebabbert

@Allison Park

Solaris 11 will break binary compatibility? How do you know that? What supporting evidence do you have? Can you post it, or is it just the same old FUD and you have no links?

Of course Solaris 11 is heavily modifying the kernel, so what has that to do with breaking binary compatibility? Solaris 11 needed this rewrite to be able to handle the hardware that comes later, the 16.384 thread server. Of course Oracle could have done some small patching and upped the thread count on Solaris 10, to twice or so, but not much further. Solaris 10 is on the verge, 512 threads or 1024 - what is the difference? It is only a factor of two and in the same vicinity. A factor of two is nothing.

No, Oracle wants magnitudes better than that, and aims for 10s of thousands. Then you need a total rewrite, and can not do small patches of the kernel anymore.

However, pre POWER7, IBM AIX scaled quite bad, because P595 was the biggest and it only had 64 cpus. If IBM needed greater scalability, IBM went to Linux to run on greater POWER servers. AIX was out of the question for the big super computers based on POWER. For the P795, IBM could not patch AIX to handle 1024 vcpus, instead AIX needed a total rewrite. Just like Solaris 11 is going through now - a total rewrite. However, IBM AIX lags behind. AIX is on the same stage today, where Solaris 10 was years ago.

My point is still valid:

AIX handles 1024 vcpus, that is in the same neighbourhood as Solaris 10 (512 threads)

Solaris 11 handles far more threads.

Thus IBM AIX lags behind a generation.

@tpm

"...The more interesting thing as far as I am concerned is contemplating a machine that can cram 16,384 threads in 64 sockets. That just sounds like magic to me--like many things that are common did 20 years ago..."

I remember when I heard of the 8 core cpu Niagara back in the days. It was like magic to me. But today everbody has them. I predict in the future everybody will have 16.384 thread servers - if the OS manages to be able to scale. For instance, the old Solaris 10 will not today be able to handle such many threads, but Solaris 11 does. Such servers clearly needs a rewrite of the kernel. IBM did this recently to be able to handle P795.

IBM needs to rewrite AIX again if IBM is going in the direction of more cores with many threads. Just the direction Sun did a decade ago.

Of course, Solaris 10 handles today 512 threads. To double this to 1024 would be easy to do with a patch. But there is no point of doing that. Better with a over engineered rewrite to handle 10s of thousands of threads. Real over engineering. :o)

@Jesper Frimann

"...You do know that 256 physical cores on the p795 equals 1024 virtual CPU's right ?..."

No, I did not know that. Do you have a link on this? If this is true, then I will stop talking about AIX scales bad compared to Solaris 10, of course.

If we compare to Solaris 11 and 16.384 threads, then 1024 is nothing, of course. So my point is that AIX lags behind in terms of scalability, but it seems that AIX has catched up on the last Solaris 10.

Another cool ability

that Solaris 11 has, is to do a rollback if something gets wrong (e.g. patching). This functionality relies on ZFS.

Before an upgrade, you create a snapshot: ZFS has COW, which means that all new writes will be written on a new place on the disk. Old data will not be touched nor altered. Thus, the old data in the snapshot is never altered. To create a snapshot takes one second O(1) actually.

Let us assume that something went wrong, you got a virus or something. Then you just reboot, and upon boot you choose which snapshot to boot into via GRUB. So you can have many many snapshots and boot into any of them. You can have one stable branch, and one unstable if you wish. True versioning, like CVS, on bit level of the system disk. If you delete a snapshot, those bits are removed and you are back to the old, original bits.

Thus, you can rollback to a earlier functioning state with a rollback. This saved my ass many times when I experimented with Solaris and did something weird. Some would say this is a killer feature.

@Boltar

"...Compared to a binary optimised for the specific machine its going to run on? Sorry but I'll believe it when I see it...."

Maybe you have not studied comp sci and compiler theory? Then I suggest you do that.

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"...QuickBASIC would run fast on the systems these people use...."

Actually, these stock exchanges run commodity x86 servers albeit beefed up, and Linux. Nothing fancy nor special here. Trust me on this, or go and check it up yourself. They dont use supercomputers. Typically they are using several dual socket Intel Xeon 6-core rack servers with 36GB RAM or something similar.

Of course QuickBasic would run fast on such a system, but so what? C++ and Java get equal speeds. As I said, I have some internal numbers, but can not disclose them. If Java were too slow, then no stock exchange would use Java. But they do. The trick is to never trigger the garbage collector in Java, but manage the memory yourself.

@Peter Collard

"...Database performance is directly proportional to specints (assuming other bits as constants) - any database person would know that - but Larry has never been good at detail. Just look at the tables if you want proof..."

I think you are wrong here. Larry has said that POWER7 is better at specint, and still POWER7 has worse database performance than T4. In fact T4 database performance seem to be fastest today on the market - even though it has lower specint performance. How do you explain that? Just look at the T4 benchmarks if you want proof...

@Asgard

Well, let me put it this way

"IBM is one of the largest companies on the market. There is no need for IBM to act like bastards, using foul play and FUD all the time. IBM should enjoy it's position as a key player, instead of acting like a Enterprise version of a thug".

Can I be much clearer? Why is it ok when IBM does like this, but it is not ok when Larry does like this? IBM has been on the market for a longer time than Larry, and IBM used FUD even before Larry was born (not quite, but).

So again, when IBM acts like this - everyone rejoices. When Larry act like this, everyone gets furious. Hey, I once just posted an x86 benchmark in a discussion of POWER vs x86 and an well known IBM supporter got really upset, claiming that I "insulted his intelligence" for posting a single benchmark. I dont get it. When Larry is doing something, everyone gets upset and furious. When IBM FUDs everyone is happy and cheers and fill these posts with FUD. IBM attacks everyone and everything. I remember all the IBM FUD in the thread about Itanium.

I dont get it. Is there one rule for IBM, and other rules for the rest?

@Ken Hagan

Theoretically, Java can be faster than C++. Because of adaptive optimization. C++ just optimizes once, upon compilation - whereas Java optimizes continuously, every time it runs the program.

@boltar

No, you are wrong. In THEORY, Java is faster than C++. It might not be the case today, but the day will come when adaptive optimization will be faster than static compilation.

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"...That'll be despite java rather than because of it. The amount of hardware thrown at java these days to get decent performance is getting ridiculous..."

In one of fixed income exchanges in Wall Street I recently visited, we had a discussion about this. Developers there said that one study at... CalTech(?) showed that a algo trading system written in Java were fastest. They implemented in different languages an measure performance.

Regarding large stock exchange systems written in Java, I have some internal numbers, but can not disclose them. But if you look at the fastest systems in the world several of them are written in Java. London Stock Exchange, LSE, system is written in C++ and runs on Linux/Solaris. NASDAQ is written in Java and runs on Linux. Look at the production numbers and you will see that Java can give extreme performance and latency - if you know what you are doing. Skip the test numbers, instead look at production performance.

So, it seems that Java rivals C++. Of course, LSE's earlier system were written in C# and ran on Windows - and crashed a lot and costed 50 million Pounds. So LSE threw it out after 1-2 years and bought Linux and C++ system for another 30 million Pounds.

@Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

Ok, I should have written "The systems running COBOL are mainly run on Mainframes".

@IIgaz

This is ridiculous. Ive read sharp attacks from IBM executives on HP and Sun. Larry only does the same thing that IBM executives do. But that is not ok?

IBM executives can say whatever they want, but Larry can not. Right?

@Allison Park

These patent stories are only some of the foul play and FUD that IBM uses. The worst thing is that people seems to believe that IBM is not Evil? That is funny. But on the other hand, IBM marketing division is very strong, they boasts all sorts of strange things. For instance, that the z196 Mainframe is the "worlds fastest cpu" when in fact it is much slower than a decent x86 server cpu.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/32414.wss

If one z196 Mainframe cpu at 5.26 GHz and 300MB cpu cache is slower than a x86 cpu, how can a big IBM Mainframe with 24 cpus virtualize 1.500 x86 servers as IBM claims? That must be a gross.. something.

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Regarding my Larry Ellison envy, hell yea I am envious of him. To be one of the richest man on earth triggers my envy, yes. I am but a man. Not like you, that have all the money you need.

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Regarding the RISC patent. RISC cpus are built like that. Instead of having complext microcode, you only have a few cpu operations, that are heavily optimized and only use them. Basically you throw out all unnecessary. Keep it lean n mean. That is faster than bloat.

One of the links that you think are Trolling, is written by James Gosling, father of Java. I can assure you that he is more credible than you, a random FUDer that never backs any of your claims up. At least I give links that shows I speak true.

The other Forbes link you dispute, is by

"Gary L. Reback has been named one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America" by the National Law Journal"

and I think he also is more credible than you, a well known FUDer and Troll.

So, instead of accusing me bringing up old articles, how about you bringing up ANY article that supports your unsubstantiated claims? Oh, there are no such links, because you made up everything? Ok, I get it. Then how about you stop making up things in that case? Only write things you can support, either by a stringent and correct logical reasoning, or by supporting links. If you speculate, be clear with that and dont try to make everyone believe your speculation is true. I speculate, but then I am clear with that - I dont try to fool everyone my speculation is true.

@Shannon Jacobs

"...I'm willing to consider the possibility that Oracle is distinctly more evil than IBM..."

You must be kidding. IBM has always been the big Evil company, until MS took all attention. But IBM has never stopped being Evil, IBM continued.

You maybe dont know that IBM is the company that popularized and systematically used FUD? Read the FUD article on wikipedia and see. And also, you can see all the IBM supporters FUD a lot in almost every thread. Why are there no Oracle FUD in the comments here? No, we only see IBMers attack HP, Sun and now Oracle. And best of all, most of these attacks are "anonymous". Real cowards are what IBMers are.

With such a master spreading FUD, the pupils are the same. "More evil than IBM" - what a joke.

@ElReq!....

The systems running COBOL are Mainframes. I dont know of any x86 / POWER / SPARC that are mainly deployed to run COBOL.

And theoretically, Java is faster than C++, because adaptive compilation. And for your information, several of the largest and fastest stock exchanges in the world, are done in Java.

Regarding top500, it has no relevance for the discussion. In place 7(?) we find Blue Gene, which is very fast. It has many Power cpus running at 750MHz. Do you claim that such cpus are among the fastest in the world? No. So what does Blue Gene tell you? A supercomputer has other needs and requirements for their cpu, needs that say nothing about how good or fast a cpu is.

@Tom 99

Where am I wrong? So when I say that our large finance systems that you have heard of (and probably used), are keeping track of decimals separately and never do any rounding - I am wrong?

What should I read about decimal floating point? Can you give me a link "so that I understand"?

Again, such trivial calculations are easy to do, and no cpu have problems doing that. The problem is fetching data quick enough to feed the cpu continuously. I dont understand why are talking about that IBM feature, it sounds as if it were as good as sliced bread?

@Allison Park

So have you read the links? When IBM almost black mail other companies for money? You think that is ethical and fair, right? And when IBM is using foul play, you have no understanding that people react, and dont like the foul play by IBM?

@A.C

Ok, I did not know that. In all my travels around the world, I have never seen AIX nor POWER. Do you what these banks are using the IBM systems for?

@bazza

Regarding integer calculations or floating point calculation - I dont understand why you IBMers are talking about it so much. The problem of doing such calculation is not a very big problem. The vast majority of server cpus have no problems of doing such calculations, they have no performance problems. The problem is fetching data. Of course, if you are doing BIG calculations then it is a problem. For instance, to multiply really really huge numbers takes long time, the best algorithm are using FFT and does that i O(n log log n). But I dont think such calculations are done. Only trivial calculations are done, such calculations no cpu have problems to do.

Regarding embedded signal processing, I will check that up. Thank you for that. Our system is among the fastest in the world today, and if we could lower latency even more, it would be even better. But I have doubts those solutions transfer directly to servers and IT.

@Dazed...

Just like when IBM nearly bankrupted Sun? As Gosling explains:

http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/quite_the_firestorm

Or like this time, when IBM demanded money from Sun, saying "ok, you are not violating these 7 patents, but we have many more. Do you want us to come back with patents you actually do violate or are you going to pay?". Sun payed again.

http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html

I would not cry if Oracle crushed IBM, for obvious reasons. Larry is the Man. :o)

@boltar

In the banking world, the problem is not doing fast integer arithmetic - that is easy to do. Anyone can update accounts with the new salary fast. There are other problems, such as quickly fetching enough data to feed the cpu.

cpus have fast integer performance enough to do banking workloads.

@bazza

"...My favourite example is the decimal arithematic hardware acceleration on the POWER processors. That's absolutely perfect for massive banking applications having to process international transactions. As Boltar rightly points out in the post above, ordinary floating point is not accurate enough. Almost no one outside that niche knows that it's in there. But it shows that IBM have really thought about banking applications all the way down to the CPU design...."

Again, if you are doing it right, you never use floating numbers in finance. Every calculation is done with integers, and you keep track of the number of decimals separately. No rounding will occur. No floating numbers are needed. As I said, I work in a large finance company.

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"...And guess what - IBM sell to a *lot* of banks and financial processing outfits..."

I agree that IBM sell lot of gear to banks. The banking world relies heavily on Mainframes. Banking world updates an account with the new salary, decrease the account with rent, mortgages, etc. Those are trivial calculations, done in COBOL on Mainframes. Not very sexy. I see old dusty rooms with old men sitting with monochrome terminals doing COBOL.

In the finance world, Mainframes are never used - they are too slow. Here we typically use Linux/Solaris and C++ and do High Frequency Trading, algo trading, quant math, risk analysis etc - now THAT is sexy! Banking world is boring. Finance is cool. I see sky scrapers, suits, MBAs, Quants, Traders, HFT, algorithms, Hedge Funds, Wall Street, etc.

Traditionally, Solaris has been used in Finance and Telcos. I have never seen an IBM system in finance. I work in finance, not in banking. It is always Linux or Solaris.

@Peter Gathercole

Larry said, before he bough Sun, that Oracle DB is most common on Solaris. I dont know how common Oracle is on AIX, but clearly less.

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"...The problem here is that many applications are database agnostic, using ODBC and JDBC and SQL amongst other abstractions as the means of using a database, which allows them to switch database products relatively easily..."

I have heard the opposite. Many applications are locked to a particular database, which makes it difficult to migrate to another vendor. This is very costly to do, and regularly I read about large customers that try to migrate to another database and fail because it costs too much. Thus, I dont think you are correct on this. So, if Oracle choose to stop Oracle DB on AIX too, it would be difficult for customers to migrate to another DB. The least disruption would be to buy T4 and continue on Solaris.

But I dont think Larry will kill Oracle DB on AIX. Why did kill Larry kill Oracle DB on HP? Well, because Itanium is going to be killed by Intel sometimes soon, Larry said. I have not heard IBM saying that POWER is going to be killed sometimes soon - because yet POWER is faster than x86. But I dont think you have to worry about AIX, because IBM has not yet given a date when AIX will be replaced by Linux.

@Peter Gathercole

"...If Jesper and Matt are spreading FUD, then they are doing it in a way that is less rabid than you..."

As long as what they say have bearing in reality, it is not FUD. It is not a lie. I suggest you read the definition of FUD on wikipedia.

Regarding if Jesper and Matt is spreading FUD, and they do it in a less rabid way - so you admit they are spreading FUD? :o) But actually, Jesper is not a real FUDer, as he backs up his claims, and he i knowledgable. Matt, on the other hand, has numerous times spread FUD, such as "T3 suffers from a small cache, and can not be fast" - well, the T3 holds some world records, how can that be possible if T3 is not fast? Something is wrong, either the T3 does not hold world records, or Matt is wrong.

I hope you dont imply that I spread FUD when you write "they spread it in a less rabid way" - less rabid way [than me spreading FUD] or what? Have you seen me giving unsubstantiated claims, without being able to back them up? No. Hence, I am not spreading FUD.

How about you? You seem to defend the FUDers here, and do not object against all the FUD going on. There are lot of FUD going on here, yes. But I do not see Oracle people spreading FUD, no Oracle people are like Allison Park or Matt Bryant. They are mostly quiet. But I dont work at Oracle, so I can say what ever I want. :o)

When I come in and dispel the FUD by posting benchmarks and white papers - you do complain. Not on the FUDers, but on me. And you seem to be clearly AIX biased, as you get upset on the IBM official statements about AIX being killed. Why are you complaining on people trying to dispel the FUD? Some people could draw the conclusion that you are an IBM supporter, pretending to not be.

I dont get it, Peter. If someone gets bullied and defends himself, why do you complain on the defender? Why not the attacker? Clearly biased? I would not be surprised if you worked at IBM.

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Regarding your talk about GPFS, no, you clearly dont understand. And, at the same time, you are attacking my credibility with:

"...Like other shortcomings, I guess that you have never worked in source at a kernel level for a UNIX, and I would also hazard that you never had to play with sysgen-ing an older SunOS release. Honestly, the more you say, the less relevent what you say becomes...."

I think it is funny. You dont know what you are talking about, and attack my credibility, implying that I dont know as much as you do. I do not talk about all my different university degrees, and what I have done, etc - that is very cheap to do. Of course I could break you with that, but I dont. It is too cheap. Instead, an debate is not wun with "I know best, I have this degree" as you think. I suggest you change your debate strategy. Use good arguments instead of attacking the other person. Maybe he is more well educated than you, why focus on the CV?

You started off nice, but it did not take many posts before you revealed yourself as an IBMer in disguise. GPFS some R-S codes doesnt help to protect data. Did you not know? Do you believe that ECC RAM protects against data corruption?

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Then you start spreading the FUD:

"...And apart from Sun themselves, not everybody believes ZFS is safe. See this paper www.usenix.org/events/fast10/tech/full_papers/zhang.pdf that was presented at Usenix, which concludes that ZFS may be more tolerant of disk errors, but is not invulnerable to data corruption..."

Well, have you read that research paper? What is the conclusion? That ZFS DOES protect against data corruption. You are claiming the paper gives the exact opposite conclusion - hoping that no one would care to read it. But that paper gives support for ZFS ability to protect against data corruption. I suggest you read that paper. Thank you for further supporting my claim that ZFS gives good protection against data corruption.

@Allison Park

"...I have no reason to post anonymously...."

Because you are no stranger to FUD and foul play, it would not surprise me if you posted anonymously too, trying to give the impression that you have a massive support from everyone here, when in fact some people think you should stop FUDing.

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"...But Larry is the first person to say he will get out of the x86 server business so what does that mean for exa-crap?..."

Larry said he is not interested in the low margin x86 commodity servers. What Larry is interested in, is the high margin, tailor made systems, such as ExaData and ExaLogic - that are built on high end x86 servers. For this he can charge a premium.

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"...Would be interesting to hear your answers to your own questions in regards to SPARC vs. Intel x86...."

Of course x86 have catched up and surpassed SPARC64 in terms of performance. But SPARC64 has better scalability and for large systems SPARC64 still gives better results in some cases.

However, the T3 and T4 are tailored to another workload. POWER7 and x86 targets the same workload: few strong threads. Not high throughput. Especially T3 is tailored to high throughput, maybe also the T4 (I do not know yet). In terms of throughput the T3 has a definitive and sharp edge. For instance, benches show you need 10 Intel x86 at 3GHz to match one low clocked T3 in some throughput benches. 10x faster definitely counts as a definitive and sharp edge.

Thus, Niagara is a niche cpu targeting throughput and a cpu targeting few strong threads will never reach the same throughput as a throughput chip. In other words, Niagara is not threatened in it's niche, by any strong thread cpu. It would be a miracle if a cpu would have few strong threads and at the same time, have 10x througput just like the Niagara. Thus, Niagara will thrive in it's niche. Maybe T4 is now a general purpose cpu - I dont know. But Niagara will thrive in high throughput niche.

Regarding future of Solaris vs AIX. Solaris runs on both x86 and Niagara. Thus, no matter which workload you have, Solaris will run it. Is it strong few threads? Run x86. Is it high throughput? Run Niagara. Is it both? Run T4(?). Niagara is not competing with x86, but POWER is.

AIX is competing with x86, they are both targeting the same workload. And I do believe that x86 will soon be the king in terms of performance. Now POWER7 is faster. But for the first time in history, x86 will be faster. In a few years. When x86 surpasses POWER, what will happen? Your guess is as good as mine. But maybe, IBM have to lower the price. The race between POWER and x86 will only have one outcome. Look at past historical data and try to extrapolate into the future.

The race between Niagara and x86: Niagara is always faster in it's niche. Both have a place in the market. Few strong threaded cpus: x86 or POWER. Who will win? Massive throughput: Niagara.

I dont really know about T4. Is it more similar to x86 and POWER? In that case, x86 will win in the long run.

@Jesper Frimann

"....Keb. I don't care about IBM/SUN/ORACLE whatever anonymous fanbois that post strange things. Neither should you, and neither does anybody else...."

Well Jesper, you gained a lot of cred in my eyes here. It shows you are critizing FUDers. I wish more people here would be like you, Jesper. At least you know what you are talking about, and post and dissect benchmarks. In my eyes, you are one of the IBMers I have most respect for.

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"...The problem with you is that you echo without any reality check what soever, Oracle marketing material. And the material is pretty desperate at the moment cause to be quite frank Oracle is under enormous pressure in the UNIX marked...."

I am echoing marketing material because I try to counter FUD similar to "the SPARC T3 is slow because it suffers from a too small cache". To disprove that, I post some world records. That should silence the FUDer. I dont think a viable strategy would be "no, you are wrong the T3 are really fast!" - without posting any evidence. I better just post some hard facts, and then we can see that the T3 is in fact fast - contrary to the FUD.

Regarding these SPARC T4 and T3 benchmarks, it seems you dispute the fact that the T3 and T4 are really fast in some benchmarks. Some believe that T4 is faster than POWER7 in several benchmarks. This you dispute too, as can be seen since you reject the T4 benchmarks because of this or that reason, so you mean the benches have no bearing in reality. Fine. Everyone is entitled to have an opinion.

(I have no problems admitting that POWER7 is a good cpu, and it is fastest in the world in some benchmarks today. And POWER7 would be my top recommendation depending on the client's workload. A fact is a fact. A truth is a truth.)

@Jesper Frimann

Ok, it seems that we agree on all my questions. Then it shows that my posts have some bearing in reality, and not just made up, nor are some false rumours.

@Jesper Frimann

"...So what was your point Keb ?..."

Nothing really. I quote myself:

"I remember when I posted a benchmark when Sun had higher throughput than IBM, and you complained and said something like "It means nothing, because IBM has lower latency". Later I posted another benchmark when Sun had lower latency, whereupon you said something like "it means nothing, because IBM has much higher throughput". So no matter what, Sun could never win."

I knew that Oracle could never win anyone of these benchmarks. I just wanted to see which excuse you would be using.

@Jesper Frimann

I like things that I can post and prove my claims, therefore benchmarks are quite good. They give a simple number that you can relate to, and they are repeatable which is good.

I dont like claims such as these, by some Anonymous which were very frequently posted earlier:

"I work at a large Bank/Exchange/Telco/whatever. We are using SPARC and I really love them, but now we tried IBM POWER6 and they are so much faster so we are now migrating to POWER6. You do that too, or you will start to loose money

/ex-SPARC lover"

This claim is clearly false, because it was always posted with the same wording, just 2-3 sentences. And always the intro "I work at a large bank" one day, next day "I work at an exchange" etc. Very little imagination.

When I post, I want to post checkable facts, so everyone knows that I do not post false things like IBMers do. That is the reason benchmarks and white papers are good.

@A.C

Ah, you must be "Allison Park" in disguise? :) I recently posted a benchmark between a cluster of six x86 servers and IBM P795 - which the x86 servers won of course. And guess what? Allison got upset and claimed I "insulted his intelligence" for posting such a benchmark, in a discussion about x86 vs RISC cpus. I never understood why posting a benchmark insulted Allison, but hey, I dont know what is going on in his mind. So, when I post an IBM article and you get upset - are you Allison Park in disguise? Quite probably...

@Beachrider

Are you refering to my article from 2003? Well, why is that trolling, to post official links to IBM? In the link, I can explain that, IBM says in the future AIX will be killed and replaced by Linux. So when I quote IBM on this, how can I be a troll? I dont get it. Even when I have a source back to IBM itself, I am called a troll? I mean, how much better supporting evidence can I get? It is impossible to have better supporting evidence.

It is like in court, if he confesses the murder and shows the weapon, then how much clearer can it be?

On the other hand, when IBM supporters such as Allison Park spew out FUD and false negative rumours with no supporting evidence - then everything is fair and well, right? If Allison and the other FUDers would have links back to Oracle or Larry at least, but no. They have made up all the evil false rumours. And you dont complain on the IBM FUD.

What is it called? Hippo... something. I think it ends with crasy?

@ch33z3

There is lot of FUD and BS here, I totally agree with you. However, the FUD and BS is only from the IBM direction.

I am only posting true statements, with supporting evidence such as benchmarks, white papers, research papers, etc if someone requests that. For instance, do you want me to prove that POWER7 is only ~10% faster than Intel Westmere-EX on some benchmarks?

@Peter Gathercole

"...AIX itself and the RAS of POWER systems are, along with the associated support skills that the customers have invested in...."

I agree that AIX has far better RAS than Linux. This is true, and I can not deny this. It is a fact. However (just to tease Allison Park and his FUD), do you agree that

1) x86 is catching up fast in terms of performance?

2) Intel is adding RAS to Intel Xeon cpu quite quick

3) The price difference between x86 servers and POWER7 servers is smaller than ever?

4) IBM has officially said that they are going to replace AIX with Linux, in the future?

Is everything I say true, or false evil rumours that have no bearing in reality? Which one of the above statements are false?

Compare all my true statements, with the FUD and lies from Allison Park, with no links nor supporting evidence.

How come you are not questioning Allison Park with his obvious FUD? Why are questioning me when I dispel Allisons FUD? Why are you questioning me when I post true statements? I dont post false statements, do I?

@Peter Gathercole

"...Both are still innovating, but neither are doing as much as they used to..."

The fact is Solaris 11 is the biggest step forward, ever for Solaris. It has lots of innovations, ZFS, DTrace, huge scalability, etc. You call DTrace for innovative, that is true. ZFS is also innovative. You know that ECC RAM protects against data corruption in RAM, well, so does ZFS protect against data corruption on disk. I dont know if GPFS has protection against data corruption? And I can assure you that ZFS has many more users than GPFS. In my opinion, it is quite bad to not use ECC RAM, or to not care about data corruption on disk.

What has AIX done lately? Well, it had to be rewritten last year, because it could not handle 256 cores in P795. So now AIX can actually handle 256 cores. Well, Solaris is now targeting servers with 16.384 threads. We are not talking about a few hundreds of threads. Solaris has scaled to hundreds of threads years ago. So what I see AIX is doing, is removing limits it has. I would hardly call it innovation. Sure IBM did lot to virtualisation long time ago, yes. But innovative today? No. IBM only copies Oracle / Sun.

For instance, IBM mocked Sun and said that many lower clocked cores were stupid, and the only way forward was cpus with 1-2 cores exceeding 5GHz - because databases like strong threads. And look at POWER7; many lower clocked cores. Why is not the POWER7 constructed with 1-2 cores at 7-8GHz? No. When Sun created 8-core cpus everyone thought it was crazy, but now everyone has them. So Oracle/Sun shows the path, and IBM and HP follows. And on the way, they mock Oracle/Sun at the same time, while copying. But imitation is the sincerest form of flatter, they say.

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"...Whether this means that AIX is stagnating is a moot point, but if the OS is mature and does what is needed, why change?..."

If IBM shares your view point, there will be no more innovations from IBM. Why be content? Why be hungry, always looking for improvement? Sun's engineers asked themselves: everyone is trying to make smallest computers, why dont we do the opposite, the largest computer? And Sun created and sold the BlackBox, a container full of servers. Now recently, IBM and HP is also selling... guess what? If you dont see the point of trying to be better, well, what can I say....

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"....I was just speculating (in a provocative way, I admit) why you are so vocal about shouting down any UNIX technology other than Oracle/Sun's and Intel's processors. I believe that most people would regard many of your comments as being overly negative...."

Of course my comments about AIX are negative. But have you asked yourself WHY my comments are negative? I have explained that numerous times, but probably you missed that. Here is the explanation again: there are lot of IBM supporters here that FUDs a lot, spreading false negative rumours about Solaris and HP. As a counter, I give it back, but the difference is that I do not FUD nor spread false rumours. No, I am only quoting IBM. I dont like FUD and false negative rumours, so I do not do that. Of course I am speculating, but I am very clear with that. I do not write things as "I talked to IBM CEO and he assured me that IBM is going to kill Mainframe business, so you all better migrate before it is too late!" - which would be a false statement and a lie. You see such statements frequently from IBM supporters. To counter all that, I give it back. But with real quotes. I do not make anything up. I have nothing against facts such as negative quotes from Larry, nor do I have anything against SPECULATION, when the poster is clear with that he is speculating. Anyone is free to speculate, but make it clear then.

"Opinions are never wrong. Facts can be wrong". When I see FUD and lies, I correct them. And everyonce in a while, I do to the IBM supporters, what they do to Oracle and HP: give it back.

Why dont you question all the IBM FUD going on here? Why are questioning my "give back"? Without all the IBM FUD, I would not have to counter. I post as a RE-ACTION on what Allison Park and other FUDers say. I react on those posts. Without such posts, no reaction from me. It is as simple as that.

So, will you start to question the IBM FUD going on here, or will you only question my dispelling of the FUD?

@Peter Gathercole

As long as IBM is making profit from POWER, IBM will continue to sell POWER. That is true. But today the POWER7 is only 10% faster than Intel Westmere-EX on some benchmarks. And POWER servers are only 3x as expensive as x86 servers. Dont you think that x86 will catch up on POWER soon? When that happens, dont you think IBM has to lower the price on POWER even further?

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Regarding if I am jealous on AIX and Linux. Well, you dont know too much about me, that is for sure. I do not consider AIX interesting from a technical viewpoint, mostly copying from others nowadays, for instance Solaris. The AIX big days are over. Development pace of AIX has slowed I read from an article here 2-3 years ago.

I do consider Linux inferior to AIX, though. Everybody does, I hope. But of course I prefer Unix to Linux. At my large finance company, we are migrating away from Solaris and VMS to Linux. Which sucks. But it is policy from highest management, and nothing I can do. But I like open source. But Linux is clearly inferior.

@Matt Bryant

Actually, I do agree with you here, Matt. Benchmarks say nothing really.

But, at least I do provide some benchmarks and some support for my claims. Others, for instance Allison Park just spews out lot of claims with no support what so ever. Which means they are all made up. FUD in other words. If Allison could support the claims, I would say nothing.

@Allison Park

"...Thanks for posting that 2003 article again and pretending it is relevant to todays market..."

You are welcome. I will post that article as long as you are posting the same old FUD, that I have dispelled as many times: "Niagara suffers from a small cache - it can not be fast with such a small cache", etc.

Regarding if the article is relevant to todays market, yes of course it is. First of all, IBM said that AIX will be killed in the future, not in the next year. I believe IBM was refering to when x86 is catching up on POWER7. Cheaper AND faster - who will buy POWER7 when you can get more performance for a lower price? IBM has anticipated that trend and IBM knows it will happen, x86 will surpass POWER. Until then, IBM will continue to sell POWER servers. Why should IBM stop making money when they can sell POWER7?

In the future, x86 will catch up on POWER7, the trend is clear. It will happen. Then, is the time AIX will be killed off, together with POWER. Do you dispute the fact that POWER7 is only 10% faster than Intel Westmere-EX? IBM had never believed that x86 would catch up on POWER this fast! Unbelievable fast trend.

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Then you cite some IBM executive yourself. But as you said, that article is old, and IBM did not anticipate that x86 would catch up on x86 this fast. IBM thought they still had some time before x86 catched up on POWER. But time is running out, x86 is in the heels and snapping. Thus, the x86 trend has accelerated much than IBM thought.

Questions to you:

A) Do you dispute that IBM walks away from low margin business? True or false?

B) Do you dispute that POWER7 is cheaper than ever, cheaper than any other POWER generation?

C) Do you dispute that x86 is closing in on POWER?

D) Do you dispute that x86 will be faster than POWER very soon? According to Intel, the Ivy Bridge version will be 40% faster than Intel Westmere-EX.

Can you answer these questions, dear Allison? All your answers will be affirmative. Period. Your answers mean the death of POWER and AIX. And then there will be no more FUD from Allison. Then I will rejoice and drink a toast to you. :)