Re: Is a RISC chip more expensive?

In article <1188340808.743966.96700@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
mike4ty4@xxxxxxxxx (mike3) wrote:
On Aug 20, 3:24 pm, j...@xxxxxxxxx (John Dallman) wrote:
It depends. Mainly on chip complexity and production volumes.
Leading- edge x86 chips are very complex and are cheap by some
standards, butcost far more than the RISC ARMs used in mobile
phones, and far less than the RISC ROWER5+ chips used in high-
end IBM servers.
How much does one of those "high end" servers cost anyway,
even with only 2 chips in them and 500GB of hard disks? $60,000?

You wouldn't buy a genuine "high-end" server with that little CPU or
disk.

IBM sell a 1U rack-mount that takes two POWER5+ which is well under
$10,000.

And are they good for doing lots of math computations or 3d
renders?

They're pretty good for that, since they have a lot of raw CPU, although
less than a top-end x86. I don't know how a POWER6 compares to top-end
x86 though, I haven't had a chance to play with one and won't for about
18 months.

These mini-servers have almost nothing in the way of a graphics card.
IBM sell workstations with similar processor power and decent graphics,
but they aren't priced to compete with x86 at all. They seem to be for
people who are determined that they want an IBM workstation, not matter
what.

No other RISC chip compares at all well in raw CPU power to a modern
POWER. A Sun Niagara will do a hell of a lot of webserving for one
processor, but it's not much use for computationally intensive stuff.

x86 is by far the most cost-effective way of buying CPU power, simply
because its development and fab budgets are so large.

--
John Dallman, jgd@xxxxxxxxx, HTML mail is treated as probable spam.
.

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