[Info-vax] The Future of Server Hardware?

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <506b170e$0$8555$c3e8da3$e408f015 at news.astraweb.com>, JF
Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes: 

> In what way does a mainframe from IBM have more horsepower than some 1U
> commodity x86 server ? Does it have much greater IO capabilities ?
> Faster memory than the quickpath interconects ?

Yes and yes.

> And if todays' mainframes differ in performance because they actually
> have more CPUs, (even if x86s), doesn't that still result in electrical
> power savings from reduced fans, power supply overhead, system disk
> power etc ?

Probably not.  For a given amount of computing, a given amount of heat 
is generated and needs a given amount of cooling, more or less.