Hacker News: shrimppersimmon

New comment by shrimppersimmon in "IBM Unveils Next Generation Dual-Architecture Processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE"

shrimppersimmon — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 02:44:55 +0000

In 2019 the two fastest machines in the world, Summit & Sierra (see top500.org) used ppc64le + Nvidia GPUs.

New comment by shrimppersimmon in "IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm"

shrimppersimmon — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:49:22 +0000

POWER is sold standalone, it's not packaged with Z.

https://www.ibm.com/products/power

The i systems are just POWER machines with different firmware.

New comment by shrimppersimmon in "IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm"

shrimppersimmon — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:33:41 +0000

Yes. Apple used PowerPC, and PowerPC was also in the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, and Wii U. It was also widespread in embedded sectors like networking, automotive, and aerospace.

IBM eventually stepped away from the embedded market and eventually lost their foothold in consoles as well. While Raptor did offer Power9 systems at a somewhat accessible price point, the IBM-produced CPUs were still fundamentally enterprise-grade hardware, meaning they retained the high costs and "big iron" features of server tech.

New comment by shrimppersimmon in "IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm"

shrimppersimmon — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:53:01 +0000

They design and build not one but two CPU architectures, s390/Z and POWER.

Both have been around for many years, but neither is obsolete, they're just not designed for consumer applications.

They still generate $10-15 billion per year in revenue.