System iNetwork

February 8, 2010

POWER7 Announced, IBM i Support Ready for GA

Ahead of most industry expectations, IBM announced POWER7-based Power Systems today. Basically, IBM is delivering a huge leap in capacity, virtualization, and energy efficiency through three new POWER7-based midrange systems, the Power 750, 770, and 780. Best yet, IBM i will be available on these news systems from day one, which makes POWER7 the first IBM Power Systems processor technology generation to support all of IBM's core operating systems at GA.

"Quite frankly, this is one of the biggest announcements that IBM has made in years, and POWER7 is going to have a major impact on the industry, and I'm delighted that IBM i customers are included in this launch on this astonishing new technology," says Ian Jarman, manager of Power Systems Software.

"This is of great significance to our IBM i customers because this is one of the things that has changed as we have come into the new Power Systems organization -- that we bring technology to market for our three top tier operating systems together," Jarman adds.

That's right, Jarman is gushing here, and for good reason beyond the immediate support for IBM i--it's not hyperbole to suggest that HP and Sun-Oracle have been dealt a pretty big blow with POWER7, and IBM overall seems quite excited about it. As long as IBM prices Power Systems competitively, the new systems that IBM is promoting to "Power your planet" should garner a lot of attention around the world, and even before today's announcement, at least one analyst believes that POWER7 might drive Itanium and SPARC out of the market.

Competition aside, POWER7 chips now boast:

• 4, 6 or 8 cores per socket
• 3.0 to 4.14 GHz
• Up to 4 threads per core
• Integrated eDRAM L3 Cache
• Dynamic Energy Optimization

"What you're going to see with POWER7, we're going to deliver more cores and more performance per core," Jarman says. Better yet, IBM is delivering workload optimizing features that it says make POWER7 number one in both transaction and throughput computing.

"This is one of the key things with Power, not only do we have fantastic performance, we have the ability to adjust performance according to different workloads, for transaction processing, for example, or for throughput computing where you need the highest performance from each core," Jarman says.

IBM has introduced two new workload optimization features, TurboCore, which is for max per core performance for databases that lets customers boot the system with fewer active cores (that then use the full cache on the chip), and MaxCore, which is for parallelization and high capacity.

"Most of our customers will be more interested in having all the cores active because most IBM i customers are interested in transaction processing rather than throughput computing, so MaxCore will be more relevant," Jarman explains.

IBM also is delivering improvements with intelligent threads, cache, and energy optimization, along with Active Memory Expansion for more memory for SAP, and solid state drives for blistering fast I/O access.

The New Systems

Today IBM announced three new systems of interest to IBM i customers, the Power 750, 770, and 780. Obviously, IBM has an new 7-oriented naming scheme for Power Systems.

"This is critical to understand. In POWER7, we've gone to a multi-core design, highly energy efficient, and yet we've still delivered more performance per core," Jarman notes. "This has really changed the parameters in the industry for chip design, performance, and energy efficiency." To put this in perspective, a Power 570 running with 16 cores at 5.0 GHz is bested by a new POWER7-based Power 780 running with the same number of cores at just 3.86 GHz.

The Power 750:

• 4 Socket 4U
• 6 or 8 cores per socket
• 3.0 to 3.55 GHz
• Energy-Star Qualified (first Energy Start certified RISC system)
• Up to 181,000 CPW

Compared to a POWER6 550, the core-to-core performance gain is 26 percent, jumping up to 377 percent if all 32 cores are used.

The Power 770:

• 12 or 16 core 4U Nodes
• Up to 4 Nodes per system
• 3.1 and 3.5 GHz
• Capacity on Demand
• Enterprise RAS
• Up to 292,700 CPW

Compared to a POWER6 570, the core-to-core performance gain is 14 percent, jumping up to 277 percent if all 64 cores are used.

The Power 780:

• New Modular High-End
• Up to 64 Cores
• TurboCore
• 3.86 or 4.14 GHz
• Up to 343,050 CPW
• Capacity on Demand
• Enterprise RAS
• 24x7 Warranty
• PowerCare

Compared to a POWER6 570, the core-to-core performance gain is 35 percent, jumping up to 342 percent if all 64 cores are used.

Upgrade Paths

IBM says Power 570s can be upgraded to Power 770 or 780 on June 4, 2010. As for IBM's current Power 520 customers, IBM says it plans to provide upgrade paths in 2010 from the POWER6 Power 520 2 and 4-core servers to next generation POWER7 processor-based entry servers. IBM hasn't provided a more specific timeline for its popular 520 line yet, though.

As for the big 595s, IBM says it plans to provide an upgrade path from the current IBM Power 595 server with 12X I/O to IBM's next-generation POWER7 processor-based high-end server, and the upgrade is planned as a simple replacement of the processor books and two system controllers with new POWER7 components, within the existing system frame. This will happen in 2010, but IBM hasn't been more specific yet--but there are a couple of very interesting nuggets.

First, the high-end POWER7 server will boast up to 256 POWER7 processor cores, and second, it'll be designed to operate within the same physical footprint and energy envelope of the current 64-core Power 595 server (which, when you think about it, is pretty darn sweet). Third, the POWER7 big iron will also include a high-voltage DC power option, and fourth, enterprises with multiple systems leveraging PowerVM Live Partition Mobility may use this function to maintain application availability during the upgrade process.

More to Come

There's a lot more, of course, including some interesting moves by IBM to promote POWER7 and its Power System line as the go-to servers to "Power your planet", which ties into IBM's much broader "Smarter Planet" initiative. Stay tuned.

Posted by cmaxcer at February 8, 2010 12:29 PM