Prices so low, they're giving them away!

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Well, not exactly giving them away, but a 40% off sale ain’t nothing to sneeze at.

PCWorld is reporting that IBM has dropped the price on Blue Gene/L, the system that’s now obsolete thanks to the release of this year’s new model, Blue Gene/P (with all wheel drive standard). You can now pick up a rack for $800k, 40% less than the original $1.3M asking price.

There have been several university buyers since the price drop earlier this year according the article, including UAB. Were they worried about buying last year’s model? No way:

“We knew the L was a model near the end of its production, and we were able to secure a much better price on that than we would on the newer model,” says Richard Marchase, vice president for research and economic development at UAB. “For our purposes, the L had plenty of capacity.”

But if you’re in the market, get one soon

IBM doesn’t want the Blue Gene/L’s late-in-life sales increase to last forever. [Herb Schultz, IBM’s deep-computing marketing manager] says IBM is aiming to transfer existing customers to the Blue Gene/P, which delivers more power per dollar and per watt.