OMG. You cannot make this stuff up. During the live Power11 reveal today in Germany, they tried to reveal a Power11 rack by spinning it around from being hidden...Tick tick tick tick. NOTHING for like 30 seconds. Finally it kind of stumbles and turns around. 2 kids in first grade could have spun it better. Then some lame joke about it working just fine during 20 test runs. IBM = I've Become Mediocre! C,mon man!
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@2hn Arvind is that you? Rob T? Do you have nothing better to do than troll sites that know more about the fail of IBM than you do? Get back to work and do something!
IBM’s CFO confirmed on the earnings conf call, that IBM has partnered on the manufacturing side of the house for distributed infrastructure. The partner is supposedly Foxconn. That was the heavy lift! Now the question is can IBM find a willing partner to share the development, sales, marketing costs of “Infrastructure” via partnering off their channel/legacy customer set and sharing their technology developments
We remain laser-focused on driving efficiency and cost savings by leveraging technology and embedding AI in our workflows, as well as optimizing our supply chain and service delivery. This quarter, we continue to optimize our supply chain by shifting our distributed infrastructure manufacturing to an industry-standard strategic partner. This is the next evolution of our supply chain transformation, as we pivot to a simpler, more efficient process, which helps us optimize cash conversion cycles. Through the first half, we generated $4.8 billion of free cash flow, up about $300 million year over year, resulting in our highest first-half free cash flow margin in reported history.
HPE, Cisco, Dell, Lenovo and my bet Oracle as buyers...kyndryl also....
IBM has to find a partner to help defray the cost of P12 development. The current Power revenue stream makes P12 funding going forward a very heavy lift. What does IBM have to offer a partner?
A legacy install base
A world class chip design team
A world class manufacturing patent portfolio
A guarantee of future P12 purchases and SW investment (This includes OS’s, AI, Redhat, and enterprise SW purchases.
What is IBM looking for in a partner
USA based
Has an established service support structure
Can grow or at least arrest the shrinkage of Power
Expands the ISV environment
Needs to commit for 10 years
So, the lights are dimming on IBM Power architecture
the lights are dimming on IBM everywhere
It is not a secret, IBM did a one time purchase of Power11 chips, if and when Power11 chips stock is exhausted, no more Power11 systems will be available. The first launch of PowerVS in 2019 was a disaster. The architects were replaced by new ones and engineers were moved from AIX to build the next version of PowerVS.
So, the lights are dimming on IBM Power architecture.
For the last 2 years, PVS Power Virtual Server is the answer, what is the question? PVS is where customers simply access Power systems in 1 of 16 or so IBM data ctrs in a public cloud arrangement vs what they always did since 1988 which is buy systems for on prem usage and upgrade every 4-6 years. IBM only care about 2 things: 1. STOCK HITTING $300+ - Arvind has some kind of mega bonus(s) for big $$$ before he retires (rumored to be late 25 or early 26) so the most smarmy guy on the planet, Rob Thomas, can take over. And it will BE OVER when he takes over. 2. CASH FLOW - The Street gives higher multiples and stock values to Software-SaaS-Cloud-Subscription-Cash Flow companies vs legacy hardware companies. Hence PVS which is very late, not supported well, has a horrible track record when people tried it in 2019 and competes with IBM partners who have there own managed services cloud running Power/IBMi/AIX/Linux. IBM is taking the bully on the beach strategy like Broadcom/VMware which is "...take it or leave it...". Move to cloud/subscription or take a hike. I could see an Oracle or Lenovo or Dell or HPE etc buy the Power biz and milk it as they convert people over time to x86/Linux. Power turn out the lights...the party's over...
Can anyone comment on the future of small servers within Power 11? It appears that PVS is now the answer to the very small server market (eg 1012 and 1014 market). If true, it certainly changes IBM’s go to market strategy, and moves IBM much closer to a PVS rental model vs a purchase model when it comes to “small servers”. IT Jungle has speculated that “small servers” account for 70 - 75% of IBM’s Power legacy install base.
@b4 GREAT!
Immediately thought of this when I saw it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSDrT_eDhk
Yeah supposedly people are saying they see some Power12 stuff in the GCC compiler work which normally indicates it is a go. Bill Starke the Power CPU guru and others obviously know. It is funny IBM is confused. On the 1 hand they are trained NOT to hype AI TRAINING speeds and feeds especially vs Nvidia but hype AI INFERENCING because IBM no longer has the deep pockets like the Big Boy AI guys now to keep up. But of all the thousands of LinkedIn posts today on P11 what do they do? They hype P11/Spyre vs Nvidia! Duh! Nvidia NVLink does something like 900GB/s while Spyre PCIe might do 128GB/s. IBM is hyping 300 TOPs with Spyre on Power11 while Nvida Blackwell does something like 3500 TOPS. IBM has stooped to hyping Spyre is 75 watts while Blackwell can be up to 700. C'mon IBM!
Nvidia is 100% playing in the Enterprise space. They are the Enterprise AI space. No one is running real AI workloads on Intel or Power or Z for that matter.
All this Z AI stuff is just things like real time fraud detection. 1990s era machine learning algorithms, but run blazing fast as transactions are processed. It's not "AI" in the sense that anyone has understood AI to be for the last few years. Even WatsonX doesn't run on Z.
As for P12 I agree, they will move as much of it to Z as possible and then sell off the rest. I don't think we will see a traditional P12 release from IBM, though they may spend the next 5 years talking about it.
IBM is not competing directly with Nvidia, BUT they are definitely competing in and on the AI playing field. In General IBM is playing in the enterprise space where as Nvidia is playing in the Intel space. Both have great opportunity, but different go to market strategies. As far as P11 is concerned, you can see IBM morphing P11 towards a mainframe design. Far more effort is being spent on RAS and less effort is being spent on speed. I expect P12 to be absorbed by the next generation of Telum Remember at IBM it’s all about Enterprise and nothing else matters. Farm the installed monopoly base
it's just rebranded garbage. I also read that IBM is not competing in the AI space with nvidia. IBM's future is not looking so good.