@Lennart Sorensen
"....There is no x86 that matches the performance of an IBM power6 or power7 chip. Now x86 is cheaper, but it is by no means faster...."
I suggest you stop read the IBM marketing material and instead rely on real benchmarks.
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For instance, IBM claimed that POWER6 had ~220GB/sec bandwidth. If you investigated this further, It turned out that IBM added all bandwidth in the CPU: L1 bandwidth + L2 bandwidth + etc etc. You know, if there is a bottleneck in the cpu at 10GB/sec, then there is no way the cpu will achieve more than 10GB/sec. You can not add bandwidth!
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IBM also claimed they can virtualize 1500 x86 servers on a big mainframe. It turned out that all x86 servers idle at 2-3% and the Mainframe is fully loaded at 100%! Would you agree if I claim: "my laptop can virtualize 10 IBM Mainframes with the software emulator TurboHercules (provided they are all idling and just booted up)"? No, you would not agree with this claim. This would be a clear lie.
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Regarding your claims that POWER6 is much faster than any x86, look at real benchmarks instead:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=54889
"POWER6 is not very impressive despite its crazy specifications. For example, a 4 CPU POWER6 4.2GHz machine ... performs similar to a 2 CPU Nehalem 2.93GHz ... machine in TPC-C. Although POWER6 is older but Intel is closing very fast and that really worries IBM."
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1531766/ibm-power7
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"Yes, POWER6 was inefficient in Linpack and similar benchmarks for HPC - roughly 60 per cent achievable out of theoretical peak is really bad for a modern CPU"
Also, on SAP we see that AMD Opterons is faster than 5GHz POWER6
http://www.hpcwire.com/offthewire/Sun-Microsystems-Sets-Records-with-N ew-x64-Server-78779357.html
Eight AMD opterons is 2.7x faster than four POWER6. Eight AMD opterons should be twice as fast as four POWER6, not three times faster.
In short, there are numerous links showing that x86 is faster than POWER6.
Regarding POWER7, yes it is a fast and good cpu. But I expect x86 to surpass it soon. AMD is ramping up with 20 cores, Intel is realesing 22nm 10 core cpus, etc etc. Niagara T3 is already faster than POWER7 in some benchmarks (as T3 holds several world records today)
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To summarize: Lennart, you are wrong.