Replies to post #141103 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[mas]

A two-socket server is a base level server configuration. Power systems traditionally have the best scaling in the industry due to the attention they pay to cache, memory bandwidth and system fabric which is usually leading and state of the art. x86 servers should be cheaper and cooler.

[chipguy]

Are Power8 sockets as easy to scale and cost the same as Xeon sockets?

Compared to Xeon, POWER generally burns about twice the power budget
and memory bandwidth per socket, uses silicon made in several orders lower
volume, and has no mass market sibling processors to leverage CPU core
designs from.

So its variable costs are much higher than Xeon, its fixed costs are much
higher than Xeon, and system costs tend to be higher. The rare occasions
that POWER systems approach similar socket count Xeon systems in price
reflect an unrealistic and unsustainable subsidy by IBM in an attempt to
deny the reality I just described.

So specific examples where Xeon is close to par let alone superior to
POWER in performance on a socket per socket basis are devastating for
IBM and its hopes to arrest the decline of the RISC server in the face
of growing x86 domination.