IBM’s POWER processors have a long history of revolutionizing system performance, starting with the POWER1 chip introduced in 1990. Now, systems based upon the latest generation, POWER7, incorporate a number of unique technologies designed to meet the demands of new applications and services that process an enormous number of concurrent transactions and data while analyzing that information in real time. In addition, the new systems enable organizations to manage current applications and services at less cost with technology breakthroughs in virtualization, energy savings, more cost-efficient use of memory, and better price/performance.
IBM’s new POWER7 systems can manage millions of transactions in real time and analyze the associated volumes of data typical of emerging applications. POWER7 systems also offer industry-leading return on investment though dramatic improvements in price/performance, energy savings and virtualization for server consolidation. Compared to POWER6 systems, the new solutions can deliver four times the performance and four times the virtualization capability for the same price and are three to four times more energy efficient. Additionally, the total cost of acquisition and ownership can be better than competitive systems.
IBM has introduced four new POWER7 systems:
IBM Power 780, a new category of scalable, high-end servers, featuring an advanced modular design with up to 64 POWER7 “cores,” or CPUs, and the new TurboCore workload optimizing mode
IBM Power 770, a modular enterprise system with up to 64 POWER7 cores
IBM Power 755, a high-performance computing cluster node with 32 POWER7 cores
IBM Power 750 Express, a one- to four-socket server that supports up to 32 cores.
IBM Systems Director Express (Standard and Enterprise Editions) offers new and greatly simplified packaging of management software for the new systems and includes the advanced virtualization management capabilities of VMControl. VMControl allows a “systems pool” of multiple Power servers to be managed as one entity, which can enable reductions in management cost and complexity.
Optimized for Workload Performance and Maximum ROI
IBM has vastly increased the parallel processing capabilities of POWER7 systems, a key requirement for managing millions of concurrent transactions. The new Power Systems also deliver industry-leading transaction processing speed, optimized for database workloads, and “throughput” computing, optimized for running massive Internet workloads. These two computing methods are combined with superior analytics capabilities.
The three modes — massive parallel processing, “throughput” computing, and analytics capabilities — are all integrated and managed consistently with IBM Systems Director software. The overall system can then manage other systems, storage and networking — not only on POWER6 and POWER7 systems but also on IBM mainframes and x86-based System x servers — providing a complete management framework including the advanced virtualization management of VMControl.
IBM also dramatically increased the parallel processing capabilities of its middleware software, such as WebSphere, DB2, InfoSphere Warehouse and Cognos for managing Internet, data, transactions, and analytics to support POWER7 systems — with no need for clients or application providers to rewrite existing applications to exploit POWER7 advanced technologies.
A new POWER7 technology, Active Memory Expansion, uses memory compression technology to make the physical memory on the system appear to the application as if it were up to twice as large as it actually is. Active Memory Expansion technology dynamically adjusts the amount of compressed memory based on a workload’s memory needs, transparently compressing more data to be placed into memory and thus expanding the memory capacity of POWER7 systems.
Innovative, Workload-Optimized Features
To manage the demands of emerging applications, and better manage traditional applications, the new POWER7 systems — comprised of innovative and integrated hardware and software — are designed with workload-optimizing technologies. For example, POWER7 systems use more coresand add more threads, or virtual cores, per chip. Each new POWER7 processor can now run 32 simultaneous tasks — with eight cores and four threads per core — and automatically engage those cores and threads in various modes depending upon the workload to maximize overall performance.
TurboCore mode, which is highly optimized for database or other transaction-oriented workloads, does this by running with four cores active and putting most of the resources from all eight cores on the chip behind just the four active cores giving them more cache memory and memory bandwidth, and allowing the clock speed to be increased, driving significant per-core performance gains. TurboCore mode can maximize the ROI from software by potentially cutting software costs in half for those applications that are licensed per core, while increasing per-core performance from that software.
When not in TurboCore mode, all POWER7 processors are in MaxCore mode with up to eight cores per socket and four threads per core — 32 threads total. With eight times the simultaneous threads executing per “chip,” POWER7 is well suited for Internet-based workloads with many tasks coming in simultaneously that benefit from being run in parallel.
POWER7 technology features “Intelligent Threads” that can vary dynamically based on workload demand. With more threads, POWER7 can deliver more total capacity as more tasks are accomplished in parallel. With fewer threads, those workloads that need very fast individual processing — such as real-time analytics or database transactions — can get the performance they need for maximum benefit. Intelligent Threads work on all POWER7 processors and can effectively increase capacity and total performance gains.
Power Management
IBM’s Intelligent Energy technology allows customers to power on and off various parts of the system or to dynamically increase or decrease processor clock speeds based on thermal conditions and system utilization, on a single server or across a pool of multiple servers. POWER7 energy management technologies are integrated from the processor all the way up to management software, enabling policy-based balancing between energy usage and performance and systems utilization. The result is improved performance per watt.
POWER7 systems feature industry-leading virtualization supporting 1,000 virtual servers or “partitions” on a single system. In effect, this enables a single bigger server to do the work of up to a thousand smaller servers while dynamically load balancing across them all, which can increase ROI, performance and utilization of the virtualized servers.
Officially introduced on February 8, 2010, IBM’s POWER7 processors represent two decades of research and development in optimizing processor performance. With new innovations in workload performance, energy management and more, IBM’s new POWER7 systems can help organizations meet their most demanding application and service requirements while reducing TCO and boosting ROI.