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Google, on the other hand would need a reason to switch. Somewhere there's a spreadsheet with a number for energy cost savings that would make it worth it for Google to switch architectures. I've heard it's as low as 10%.
Lots of people in tech talk about being interested in trying it, it has a number of interesting characteristics, but the barrier for entry is fairly high.
It's possible to get a POWER8 based server on Softlayer, IBM's cloud product, but not as a VM. You can get one as a bare metal server, but you can't get one for an hourly fee. You have to pay for a full month, which starts out at around $1000.
There are very few individuals that would be willing to make such a commitment, but so many that would be willing to spend a few tens of dollars on spinning up a VM for a few hours to see if it provides value.
If you want people to get excited about it, or interested in using it, you really need to make it easy for people to test it on a small scale.
Is "Power 9" purposefully a Magic reference? Or just a coincidence?
MtG didn't come out until 1993. So yes, it's a co-incidence.
Is "Power 9" purposefully a Magic reference? Or just a coincidence?
I guess this is pretty much all just leverage to hold into Intel's face to get better prices out of them. "Look, we could totally convert to POWER..."
I can see China running with ARM and POWER, ditching Intel entirely. Google, on the other hand would need a reason to switch. Somewhere there's a spreadsheet with a number for energy cost savings that would make it worth it for Google to switch architectures. I've heard it's as low as 10%.
China has Zhaoxin, which develops domestic x86-compatible cores that have received massive state funding, despite little commercial success. They way it looks, I think that China has decided to stick with x86, with Zhaoxin as an "escape valve" for the case where chip supply from Intel and AMD gets threatened.
That would be nice, but the problem with these systems historically is that they're ridiculously expensive compared to x64 servers for the end user. As a result end users and SMBs never get their hands on them and nobody develops anything for them or supports them.
e.g.: "Power 9 should do better than its predecessors given its costs, bandwidth, and ease of porting. Power 9 is IBM’s first to use standard DIMMs, opening a door to other standard components that are, overall, cutting system costs by 20% to 50% compared to the Power 8, said IBM’s partners."