More fun with IBM: Cores/Processors

BM talks about it´s p570 system as an 8 processor system. You find this at the top full disclosure of their p570 TPC-C benchmark

But: Why do you need 16 processor activations instead of 8 ?

Besides of the real numbers of processors you find another interesting fact in this disclosure: A Power6 processor is extremly expensive. 23000$ for the activation and 5750$ for the hardware. A processor burns you a 28750$ deep hole in your pocket. Only for one processor. No chassis. No RAM. Just the processor. A single processor board with two Power6 processors costs you 46.000$ for the activation 11500$ for the metal. Thus 57500$. Just as an comparision: For this amount of money (okay, 2000$ more) you get two Sparc65 VI packaged in a M5000 chassis, power supplies and 16 GB memory. Ready to put it in a rack. When you look at the price for the 4 processor M5000 with the same amount of memory, there is an difference of 25000$. Thus you can assume a price of 12500$ per SPARC64 VI processor in the M5000 and 25.000$ for the 2-proc system board.