HPCwire: IBM Unveils New POWER7 Systems To Manage Increasingly Data-Intensive Services

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February 08, 2010

IBM Unveils New POWER7 Systems To Manage Increasingly Data-Intensive Services

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Unprecedented scale for emerging industry business models, from smart electrical grids to real-time analytics

ARMONK, NY, Feb. 8 -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new POWER7 systems designed to manage the most demanding emerging applications, ranging from smart electrical grids to real-time analytics for financial markets. The new systems incorporate a number of industry-unique technologies for the specialized demands of new applications and services that rely on processing an enormous number of concurrent transactions and data while analyzing that information in real time.

In addition, the new systems enable clients 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, which build on the company's 12-point revenue share gains since 2004 in the $14 billion UNIX market, can manage millions of transactions in real time and analyze the associated volumes of data typical of emerging applications. A smart electrical grid requires per-the-minute data to deliver electricity where it is needed most, in real time, while helping customers monitor their energy consumption in real time to avoid or reduce usage during the most expensive peaks each day. A major U.S. utility moving to a smart grid pilot is moving from processing less than one million meter reads per day in a traditional grid, to more than 85 million reads per day in a smart grid. The utility needs to collect, analyze, and present all that information to its nearly five million customers in real time versus the overnight batch processing of a traditional electrical grid which delivers monthly billing statements.

For example, eMeter, a leading maker of software that runs e-grids, uses IBM Power Systems to process the extreme amount of data that comes in from millions of smart meters while analyzing that information on the fly. In Canada, operators of Ontario's grid -- the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) -- which provides centralized metering services for more than 90 utility companies within Ontario Province, uses eMeter software on IBM Power Systems to process hourly power consumption data from all residential customers and plans soon to move to 15-minute data for large commercial users across the province in the near future.

"eMeter ran a successful benchmark on IBM POWER6 systems for more than 20 million smart meters -- more than four-times scale of any other utilities industry benchmark," said Scott Smith, client business manager, eMeter. "We know that there are already markets in the world that are scaling significantly. Combining eMeter and IBM's POWER7 we are confident we can hit much higher numbers to meet their needs.

POWER7 systems can also offer industry-leading return on investment though dramatic improvements in price/performance, energy savings and virtualization for server consolidation.The new systems 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. For instance, the new IBM Power 750 Express currently delivers 71 percent better price for performance than Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server and more than 280 percent better than Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 and M4000 servers. And the IBM Power 750 Express delivers more than 400 percent better price for performance than the HP Integrity rx7640 or the rx6600 servers.

Four New Power Systems

The new systems and management software include:

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. TurboCore can deliver up to two-times the performance per core of POWER6 processor-based systems, providing excellent ROI for applications with high per-core performance requirements, such as managing and analyzing transactions from a smart electrical grid.
IBM Power 770, a modular enterprise system with up to 64 POWER7 cores, featuring higher performance per core than POWER6
processors and using up to 70 percent less energy for the same number of cores as the IBM Power 570.
IBM Power 755, a high-performance computing cluster node with 32 POWER7 cores, Energy Star qualified for energy efficiency, and optimized for the most challenging analytic workloads.
IBM Power 750 Express, an Energy Star qualified business server for mid-market clients offering four times the processing capacity of its predecessor, the IBM Power 550 Express, in the same energy envelope and 10 times the performance of a comparable HP Integrity rx6600. The Power 750 is three times more energy efficient than the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440, Sun's self-proclaimed "Coolthreads" server.
IBM Systems Director Express, Standard and Enterprise Editions, which offer new and greatly simplified packaging of management software for the new systems and include 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.

The Power 750 Express and 755 planned volume ship date is Feb. 19 and the Power 770 and 780 planned volume availability is March 16. The IBM Systems Director Editions, supporting both POWER7 and POWER6 models, planned availability is March 5.

Systems Optimized for Workload Performance and Maximum ROI

IBM has vastly increased the parallel processing capabilities of POWER7 systems -- integrated across hardware and software -- a key requirement for managing millions of concurrent transactions. As expected, the new Power Systems continue the history of IBM industry-leading transaction processing speed, optimized for database workloads, and also deliver a leap forward to "throughput" computing, optimized for running massive Internet workloads.

These two computing methods, combined with superior analytics capabilities, are ideal for emerging business models where large amounts of data from sensors in electric grids, roads, or the supply chain, for example, can be connected to pools of POWER7 systems optimized for Internet workloads, then analyzed with analytics systems. 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.

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