# IBM POWER

13 Hacker News commenters recommended IBM POWER and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for servers and critical workloads that must stay up, and for its well-regarded architecture; the common caveat is weaker multi-core performance than mainstream server CPUs.

## Why people recommend it

- Still strong for servers (3 comments): "POWER may have dropped out of the consumer space but it still has a vital place in servers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48681833)) "IBM still sells extremely POWER ful systems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48270098)) "Power chips are still excellent" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49459430))
- Well-designed, pleasant architecture (2 comments): "The RISC ISAs developed later, including ARM, HP PA-RISC and IBM POWER, have avoided some of the mistakes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47330137)) "the architecture is an absolute pleasure to work with whenever I have to" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47614994))
- Useful POWER9 features and firmware (3 comments): "At least it's been fine for four years of research software on a POWER9 cluster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027072)) "The switch to closed source firmware in Power10 is also a downer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46498259)) "It is such a nice system with openfirmware." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47616153))
- Reliable for workloads that can't go down (2 comments): "their shit Just Works so anyone doing Serious Business just keeps using them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50125698)) "Their mainframes handle the critical infrastructure that can't go down." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134639))

## What people warn about

- Lagging Linux kernel support (2 comments): "Linux hasn't supported POWER7 in quite some time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48368225)) "being unable to run a modern Linux kernel would be more work than I wanted to have" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48350653))
- Trails mainstream multi-core performance (2 comments): "a brilliant architecture that was simply out run by others" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392490)) "After Power9, IBM became uncompetitive multi-core performance against mainstream server CPUs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47615794))
- Closed firmware and per-cycle charges (2 comments): "The switch to closed source firmware in Power10 is also a downer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46498259)) "They also charge you for every instruction cycle on the machines" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48270454))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Oxide Computer rack](https://hackerapproved.com/p/oxide-computer.md): 92 recommend
- [IBM Z mainframe](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ibm-mainframe.md): 23 recommend
- [Nvidia GH200 server](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-gh200-server.md): 12 recommend
- [IBM AS/400](https://hackerapproved.com/p/as-400.md): 11 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.ibm.com/products/power)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "IBM POWER", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ibm-power/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).