IBM 9077 manual GRF Software, Price Comparison

9077-04Swith one SP Switch Router Adapter			$ 53,000
HIPPI Adapter			13,500
			66,500		$ 53,000
135 MHz	Wide Node			48,000
					19,000
64 MB memory				3,200
					72,000	$ 53,000
4.5 GB Disk				1,950
				595	48,000
Ethernet						20,000
SP Switch Adapter				10,000	3,200
						73,000
HIPPI Adapter				17,500	1,950
					595	48,000
				81,245
					10,000	3,200
	4 FDDI 1-port SAS Adapters *				15,980	1,950
					75,730	595
						10,000
		2 ATM 155 Adapters *				5,390
						69,135

Figure 10. Price Comparison

These price comparisons are based on US prices as of March 1998. In other countries these prices may be different. The basic message of these charts is that the solutions based on the GRF could be quite competitive and will quite often be cheaper than the conventional configurations.

Let us look, for example for a solution connecting an RS/6000 SP via HIPPI to a mainframe system. The first chart shows that a GRF solution is cheaper than adding a dedicated node for the HIPPI connection to your system, apart from the fact that the GRF solution is the better choice from a performance point of view.

It is nearly the same if you need a connection to an FDDI network. One GRF FDDI media card offers four independent singlering connections. An offer based on an dedicated SP node is more expensive than a GRF solution.

Our example on the third chart focuses on an ATM connection. In this case, the RS/6000 SP node based solution is the more reasonable solution, if you consider only the price. But the difference is not that much; the growth path with the GRF-based offer will be better than the node solution.

2.2 GRF Software

The software functionality of the GRF is distributed between the Router Manager on the IP Switch Control Board (see also Section 2.3.2, “GRF Features” on page 26) and the individual media cards. While the Route

18IBM 9077 SP Switch Router: Get Connected to the SP Switch