] IBM plans today to announce new server computers that behave
] more like mainframes and are priced as low as $1,500. The
] servers will be able to run as many as 10 operating
] systems on a single machine. One processor can divvy up
] the workload - packing the capability of several machines
] into one - by building several virtual machines that run
] on the underlying hardware. It is a technology that has
] existed for decades in the mainframe market long ruled by
] I.B.M.

These are apparently going to be Power based.

] Strategically, the I.B.M. approach is quite different
] from technology leaders, like Intel and Microsoft, that
] specialize in either hardware or software. "In the
] future, advantage is not going to be so much in the chip
] or the operating system, but in the management and
] control layer of technology," Mr. Zeitler said.

[ I read a bit about IBM's virtualization plans a few years ago and found it really compelling. It's interesting to see the tech come to commodity priced hardware... that's a bit unexpected, but ultimately good, i think.

The "return of the mainframe paradigm" has been a floating meme for some time now... i wonder how much traction it will ultimately have. Certainly if any company is in a position to bring together the necessary tech to work it, IBM is the one, I'd say.

My feeling is that the centralization may be illusory -- the part of the paradigm in which your relatively low power workstation offloads computation will come back, but the "mainframe" it offloads to may well be a broad distributed system, possibly a global, public one, though that may be the excess of scifi i've read.

I for one would be right on board with a super thin, super light, wireless tablet which offloads almost all of it's heavy lifting to other nodes. Perhaps even the data storage could be distributed...

ok, rampant speculation mode off... -k]