The dirty little secret in the Linux market is that no one who is creating a high-performance computing cluster actually pays for the server version of Linux, but, rather, uses a stripped down workstation version that costs a lot less.
In order for AIX to compete on equal footing in the politically and economically important HPC space (IBM’s customers have a large installed base of Power-AIX applications that are not so easily ported to Linux), IBM needed to cut AIX prices, which is exactly what the company has now done.
Specifically, IBM has created a new D5 software group for AIX 5.2 and 5.3. The ValuePak low-cost version of AIX 5.2 and 5.3, which is missing some features of the full releases, will cost $150 per processor. A regular AIX license will cost $170 per processor.
This new lower-priced license is available on the two-way, Power5-based eServer p5 and i5 servers, as well as on the two-way, PowerPC 970-based JS20 blade servers for BladeCenters. Before this announcement, customers had to pay $385 per processor on either a p5 520 or an i5 520.
That higher pricing remains in effect on the p5 550 and the i5 550; on the bigger p5 570s and i5 570s, which scale up to 16-way processing, AIX costs $1,225 per CPU. Virtualization Engine features for AIX 5.3 cost a few hundred dollars per CPU on top of that in the p5s, and is bundled for free in the i5 line.
