You make it sound like some random guy at IBM that says "AIX will be replaced with Linux" but it is not. That statement is coming straight from the IBM executives, officially on a big event.
IBM is betting heavily on Linux. Have you missed how IBM is aggressively pushing Linux on the dog slow Mainframes? Any modern x86 is 5-10x faster than the best Mainframe cpu (because they are POWER6 derivatives - which are slow cpus). http://www.mail-archive.com/r...@rlug.org/msg00167.html http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/application-development/2003/01/29/ibm-linux-will-replace-aix-2129537/ http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/it-strategy/2003/01/24/ibm-linux-is-here-to-stay-2129274/ "A replacement "won't happen overnight," [IBM Executive] Mills said, but years of experience designing operating systems at IBM and other companies means developers know just where Linux needs to go. "The road map is clear. It's an eight-lane highway." No one believes replacing AIX with Linux could happen quickly, or that IBM will leave its AIX customers in a lurch. But the degree of Mills' Linux support surprised some. "They've denied it would replace AIX in the past," said Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff. "Perhaps their thinking is beginning to shift. They've been quite clear that they see Linux as picking up AIX technologies maybe a year, two years later, but they've certainly been quite circumspect about saying Linux would ever replace AIX." Regarding the trends, the trend shows that x86 is soon as fast as POWER. As I said, when x86 is matching POWER, things will change for AIX, it will actively be phased out. However, x86 will not catch up on Niagara, because Niagara is in another niche where it is easily the best. POWER will continue to scale better than x86 and have better RAS. But, when x86 gives equal performance customers will prefer 2-4 socket x86 servers instead of 2-4 socket POWER servers. POWER will only give an advantage on big machines with many sockets. But those are too expensive. Slowly few socket POWER servers sales will decline in favor of few socket x86 servers. IBM will continue to sell servers with many socket, but IBM can not live on them. Too expensive and a too small a market. Eventually, at IBM, all sold servers up to 8 sockets will be x86. Servers with more than 8 sockets will be POWER. But IBM can not live on those large servers. Customers will start to prefer buying several smaller 8-socket x86 servers and cluster them. Big POWER servers will die. And that will be the final nail in the coffin for AIX and POWER. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
