Anandtech posted yesterday a very detailed review and performance evaluation of the POWER8 processor. The system reviewed and benchmarked is an IBM Power 822L, a 10-core POWER8 system with 128GB of RAM that runs Linux. The machine is benchmarked against the Xeon E5 and yields some very good results.
Their conclusion is very positive:
“All in all, the arrival of OpenPOWER servers is much more exciting than most of us anticipated. Although the IBM POWER8 servers can not beat the performance/watt ratio of the Xeon, we now have a server processor that is not only cheaper than Intel’s best Xeons, but that can also keep up with them. Combine that with the fact that IBM has lined up POWER8+ for next year and a whole range of server vendors is building their own POWER8 based servers, and we have a lot to look forward to!”
I recommend you read the full review here.
* The copyright of IBM Power822LC image above belongs to IBM. Used with permission.