In CI 3,593, we detailed the pricing specs on IBM’s new Power3 nodes for its RS/6000 SP PowerParallel servers. That story contained errors, which will now be corrected. The list price of a thin Power3 node is $22,000, not $22,700 as we reported; the price of the wide node is $27,000 as we reported, as is the cost of adding a second processor at $8,000. The new nodes do not work with the High Performance SP switch, as we said, but do work with the existing TB3 switch that was announced four years ago and is installed in most of the SP systems out there. They do require a new switch adapter to connect the node to the TB3 switch, however. This new switch adapter, the SP Switch MX2 Adapter, costs $12,500; upgrades from the prior SP Switch MX Adapter cost $10,000. As for memory pricing, the price cuts that IBM announced on February 1 applied to upgrades from S5 series memory cards, which work only on SP nodes using the 120MHz and 135MHz Power2 cards, to S6 series cards, which are used in the 160MHz Power2SC cards. The cost of these upgrades is indeed $30 to $50 per megabyte; but what IBM’s note to customers didn’t say is that IBM is giving MB-for-MB rebates on the returned S5 cards, which means that the resulting price is $20 to $25 per megabyte, $5 to $10 per megabyte less than the S6 memory list price. Memory for nodes using the 604e SMP cards is $25 per megabyte, and memory on the new Power3 nodes is a more respectable $15 per megabyte.
Content from our partners
