RE: [Linux-ia64] Itanium gets supercomputing software

David Mosberger
2003-04-11T17:59:12Z

>>>>> On Fri, 11 Apr 2003 10:37:39 +0200, "Adriano Galano" <adriano@satec.es> said:

>> >>>>> On Fri, 11 Apr 2003 06:55:30 +1000, Duraid Madina
>> <duraid@octopus.com.au> said:

Duraid> You and I both know the only real barrier to Itanium
Duraid> adoption is the price. Can anyone here shed some light on
Duraid> this? Why is Itanium hardware still so expensive?

>> Remember that Intel is targeting Itanium 2 against Power4 and SPARC.
>> In that space, the price of Itanium 2 is very competitive.

Adriano> What's mean very competitive? How it compare with Power* for example?

AFAIK, Power4 CPUs are not sold on the open market, so it's difficult
to compare the price of the CPU alone (surely IBM has a list price,
but with different discount schedules, that price may or may not be
meaningful in practice). Here is one real price point for an Itanium 2
workstation:

- hp workstation zx2000 (Linux software enablement kit)
- Intel? Itanium 2 900MHz Processor with 1.5MB on-chip L3 cache
- 512MB Total PC2100 Registered ECC DDR 266 SDRAM Memory (2x256MB)
- 40GB EIDE Hard Drive
- NVIDIA Quadro2 EX
- 10/100/1000BT LAN integrated
- 16X Max DVD-ROM
- Linux software enablement kit (not an operating system)
- 3-year warranty, next-day, onsite hardware response, Mon - Fri, 8am - 5pm
- $3,298

(To see this config, go to www.hp.com, then click on "online shopping"
-> "small and medium business store" -> "workstations" -> "hp Itanium
2-based workstations" -> "zx2000").

I don't know exactly what price/configuration Power4 machines start.
Perhaps one of the IBMers on this list could chime in?

--david