IBM Needs More Power

New Power 7 systems can be configured with up to eight core processors with each core processor running at over 4.1 GHz and executing four threads per core, said Rod Atkins, senior vice president for the IBM Systems and Technology  Group during a press conference in New York City.

The new 45-nanometer processor also features higher levels of integrated eDRAM cache, the ability to throttle down energy usage based on application requirements, and uses about half the transistors required in the previous generation of Power 6 processors.

The first systems to use the Power 7 processor will be midrange offerings capable of running AIX, Linux and OS/400 operating systems. Those systems can also be configured with new TurboCore capabilities to optimize database performance across multiple cores; MAXcore capabilities that optimize the performance of applications that take advantage of parallelism; an Intelligent Threads capability that dynamically adjusts the threads mode based on application performance requirements; Intelligent Cache that dynamically allocates cache memory; Active Memory Expansion that can be used to extend physical memory, Intelligent Energy Optimization tools and solid-state drives.

IBM officials took pains to stress that IBM middleware and database software has been optimized to take advantage of these new capabilities that are embedded in AIX running on the Power 7 processor used in the Power 750 Express, the Power 755, Power 770 and Power 780. They added that IBM will be focusing on recruting application partners to do the same.

The new IBM systems sport utilization rates in the range of 90 percent at a price point that is low enough to make these systems an option for a much broader range of applications that the transaction processing and database analytic applications typically associated with Unix systems, said Ross Mauri, IBM General Manager for Power Systems in the IBM Systems and Technology Group. Part of the high utilization rate is attributable to VMcontrol virtual machine management software that is now included in some editions of IBM Systems Director software.

According to Atkins, 70 percent of all global 1,000 companies will need to modify the systems in their data center to respond to power and energy issues, which will create demand for high-density servers that consume as little power as possible. But while IBM is making a case of using Power systems in a broader number of applications, Unix systems represent a declining percentage of the overall server market even as application workloads continue to grow.

The challenge facing IBM is to convince customers that Power processors are not just a niche line for high-end AIX applications, but also for rapidly growing Linux workloads that for the most part run on Intel and AMD processors today.