Hercules MIPs

Several different posts in the past on the main forum have heralded we get xx MIPs on such and such platform.  Only recently, AFAIK, have there been folks bumping into a 250(?) MIP hard coded limit in the MIPs display logic.

Reading a little of the controversy about TurboHercules and other blog posts, I ran across this one at:

http://blogs.sun.com/jsavit/entry/hercules_goes_commercial

which has a comment in October of 2009 by Tom Lehmann of TurboHercules which blew me away.  I had been thinking a Hercules platform might only be suitable for small ancillary workloads.  His comment, portion reproduced below, makes me realize that IBM equipment could actually be replaced if the licensing issues are resolved.  It states:

"By the by, we can run a reasonably sized load (800MIPS with our standard package). If the machine in question is larger than that, we can scale to 1600MIPS with our quad Nehalem based package and we have been promised an 8 way Nehalem EX based machine early next year that should take us to the 3200MIPS mark. Anything bigger than that is replicated by a collection of systems."

Several years ago, we didn't even have 3,000 MIPs in our entire shop, 2 IBMs and 1 Hitachi.

Phil