The new Power8 systems started shipping last Friday, and this week, in our ongoing coverage of the new hardware and software technologies embodied in the systems, we are going to take a look at the memory subsystems in the new machines. There are a slew of new technologies that have been added to the Power8 machines so the memory can keep the processor cores well fed and humming along through their work.

The Power8 chip has two DDR3 main memory controllers, one on either side of the chip. Some of the DDR interfaces that were previously on the Power7+ controller

The Apache Web server should not be a mystery to anyone in the IBM midrange community. But the awful truth is that more IBM i advocates are familiar with SEU and PDM than any topic that’s within 10 miles of the Web. To everyone in that tribe, the latest enhancements to the Apache Web server and the WebSphere Application Server are sadly inconsequential. For those who see the Web in their future, this is an opportunity to keep current with technology.

Fresh from the oven IBM i 7.2 brings support for the Apache HTTP Server 2.4, which has been available

IBM and SAP last week started talking publicly for the first time about running the HANA in-memory database on Power to create a potent solution for combined analytics/transactional workloads. There’s no firm date yet when we’ll see Power HANA, but the work is progressing as part of a test and evaluation program, the mega-vendors say.

The notion of running the in-memory HANA database on IBM’s Power processors is not a new one. Executives with SAP told IT Jungle it was a possibility when we spoke with them about it last year. “Power is something that we’re looking at very

Between 1981 and 1993, IBM liquidated an extraordinary asset. Its value had been building since Thomas J. Watson became head of Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, IBM’s birth name, in 1914. That asset was a vast base of rental equipment. Rentals had fueled and stabilized IBM and fostered its binding relationship with customers. Once gone, that rental base could never be rebuilt.

At the helm when this sea change began was John Opel, who hailed from Missouri, the Show-Me State. He probably didn’t understand what IBM showed him. His successor, John Akers, caught on, but by then it was too

IT staffing is a serious concern for IBM midrange shops. It is a concern for every company regardless of platform, but the IBM i community is “home” for IT Jungle readers, and the concerns of employees and employers echo across the confederacy. Understaffing and a lack of modern business computing skills are common references. So are cost-cutting measures and workforce rebalancing. Metrics such as servers per server support staff member and IT budget dedicated to application maintenance are highlighted on spreadsheets. Division of labor and the economies of scale factor into this as well. And I almost forgot the aging

I enjoy reading your analysis of the new models (yes, I’m one of those that actually read the data tables). I would suggest that at the entry point (for the i models) $ per CPW doesn’t offer much insight into best bang for buck.

At the entry point (I will call that up to 50 or perhaps 75 users with mostly or all 5250 interactive application), there is now a lot more CPW than can be utilized. To me it would seem that a better comparison would be to take a base i system config with moderate to low memory

When I was a kid, and we had orange juice concentrate because it was cheaper and easier to store. I remember popping off the lid to reconstitute the juice and, I won’t lie, scooping out a little bit to eat off a spoon like it was some kind of glorious, natural popsicle. The concentration that is going on in the server market doesn’t taste like that, and for those who make and sell machines, it probably tastes a bit more like bile.

I used to joke a few years back that I was really worried that there might only be

Decision making is greatly influenced by clearly defined purpose and priorities. In certain professions the purpose and priorities may share a common thread. IT is not one of them. The latest survey and report from Gartner proves that point. It found that issues experienced by CIOs are seldom universal and differences exist within narrow geographies defined at regional and country levels.

You mean not everyone has cloud at the top of their priority lists? Not hardly. Cloud, according to the Gartner report, is one of the universally agreed upon priorities.

“The CIO survey results clearly show that as digital opportunities

PowerWire.eu, which rose out of the dot-com bust just like IT Jungle did in its third incarnation, was knocked offline for a bit when Penton Media, publisher of Power IT Pro and iProDeveloper were shut down at the end of March. But editor Seamus Quinn has hustled a bit and has gotten PowerWire.eu back online to serve the European Power Systems community.

Having lived through this once myself back in the summer of 2001, when money was tight but nothing like it seems to be today, I have nothing but compassion for Quinn and his team at Cue Communications,

IBM has big dreams for Watson, its quiz show champion that’s taken on more serious jobs such as cancer research and financial portfolio management. But on its way to rewriting the book on how to succeed in business, Watson still has some growing up to do. In several real world business engagements, the face of cognitive computing has been labeled a slow learner.

No one promised there wouldn’t be setbacks, but when Watson’s boss, CEO Ginni Rometty, puts a $10 billion a year revenue load on your potential, setbacks are not on anyone’s mind. The IBM public relations team is