POWER7™ Technology Breakthroughs
Virtualization for Server Consolidation with Unsurpassed Performance

INTRODUCING FOUR NEW POWER7™ systems with technology breakthroughs to dramatically increase computing power to meet the demands of today's new applications.

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.

POWER7™ technology provides much more value than just leading-edge processing density with eight cores per module. The performance and energy efficiency of the Power Systems servers introduced today are made possible by innovative POWER7™ technologies, including the unique TurboCore mode as described earlier for the Power 780 server. New Intelligent Threads technology enables workload optimization by dynamically selecting the most suitable threading mode - single thread per core, SMT (simultaneous multi-thread) with two threads per core or SMT with four threads per core. As a result, applications can run at their peak performance and server workload capacity is increased.

An optional technology available on all POWER7™ processor-based servers is Active Memory™ Expansion, which allows the effective memory capacity of the system to be much larger than the physical memory. Innovative compression/decompression of memory content can allow memory expansion up to 100 percent, allowing a logical partition to do significantly more work with the same physical amount of memory or enabling a server to run more partitions and do more work for the same physical amount of memory. The degree of expansion depends on how compressible the data is and the processing resources available. Active Memory Expansion is available for partitions running AIX® 6.1 Technology Level 4, or later.

Working in conjunction with IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager software to monitor power usage and thermal conditions, EnergyScale™ technology allows POWER7 processors to operate at a higher frequency for increased performance and, consequently, more performance per watt. Alternatively, if workloads permit, the processor clock frequency can be dramatically reduced to save energy while maintaining required application performance. This hardware and software of this Intelligent Energy environment are designed to provide clients with total operational control of their energy policy.

The IBM Power 780 server is designed for virtualized consolidation of business critical workloads, including large database serving and transaction processing applications.

The Power 780 offers clients 16- to 64- core POWER7 processor configurations running at 3.8 GHz or, utilizing the unique TurboCore™ mode, up to 32 POWER7 processor cores at 4.1 GHz. At the user's choice, any Power 780 server can be booted in MaxCore mode at 3.8 GHz or in TurboCore mode, allowing half the processor cores (up to 32 per server) to run at 4.1 GHz with twice the cache. Clients have the ultimate in flexibility, since they can switch between standard throughput optimized mode or TurboCore mode for greater performance per POWER7 processor core.

Included at no additional charge with Power 780 systems is a PowerCare services option, which entitles a client to choose one of several high-value technical service offerings from IBM to complement and assist in the deployment of a Power 780 server, whether a new system purchase or a model conversion to a Power 780 server. By leveraging the skills, experiences, and proven methodology of IBM Services professionals, clients can potentially increase the efficiency and quality of their complex datacenter operations.

For clients whose business-critical workloads are somewhat smaller, but still require world-class availability features, efficient use of resources through virtualization capabilities and outstanding flexibility for growth, the IBM Power 770 server is the answer. Two high-performance POWER7 processor options are available on the Power 770. Clients may select 16- to 64- core POWER7 processor configurations running at 3.1 GHz or 12- to 48- core configurations running at 3.5 GHz.

The IBM Power 750 Express server delivers the performance and energy efficiency of POWER7 technology - coupled with the configuration flexibility of PowerVM virtualization capabilities - in a compact 4U (4 EIA units) rack-mount package. The Power 750 Express is a 1- to 4- socket server using POWER7 6-core and 8-core processor options running at 3.0 GHz, 3.3 GHz or 3.55 GHz. It is an ideal consolidation, medium to large database or virtualized multi-application server for UNIX, IBM i, x86 Linux2 and Linux for Power workloads.

The IBM Power 755 server is optimized for running highly parallel, computationally intensive workloads and algorithms such as weather and climate modeling, computational chemistry, physics and petroleum reservoir modeling. With 32 POWER7 processor cores running at 3.3 GHz and memory capacity up to 256 GB, this high-performance compute node is designed for organizations that require a scalable system with extreme parallel processing performance and dense packaging. Using optional Enhanced Dual Port 12X Infiniband adapters, clients can create clustered configurations ranging up to 64 Power 755 compute nodes (2,048 processor cores).

POWER7 processors support AltiVec™ instruction set and extended VSX (Vector Scalar Extension) SIMD (single instruction multiple data) acceleration, which can execute up to eight single-precision or double-precision floating point operations per clock cycle per core to improve fine-grained parallelism and accelerate data processing.

Power 770 and Power 780 servers are designed in an easily expandable 4U rack-mount modular package to accommodate clients’ requirements for both rapidly changing resource requirements in an on demand environment and long-term business growth. Each 4U system enclosure accommodates a processor card with two POWER7 processor modules. On the Power 780, each module provides eight 64-bit POWER7 processor cores, with each core having 256 KB of Level 2 (L2) cache and either 4 MB (MaxCore mode) or 8 MB (TurboCore mode) of Level 3 (L3) cache. On the Power 770, each 3.1 GHz processor module provides eight POWER7 cores and each 3.5 GHz module provides six cores, with each core having 256 KB of L2 cache and 4 MB of L3 cache. All processor card options on Power 770 and 780 servers have 16 slots for DDR3 (double data rate 3) Chipkill ECC memory DIMMs, providing memory capacity of up to 512 GB per enclosure or 2 TB5 per system, depending on memory speed6.

Power 770 and 780 servers offer clients many features designed to allow them to start small and grow with continuous application availability. The innovative Hot-Node Add7 capability allows clients to add additional building blocks without powering down the system. In addition, several types of Capacity on Demand (CoD) are optionally available. Clients can install processors or memory and activate them on a 30-day trial (Trial CoD), a day-to-day basis (On/Off CoD) or permanently (Capacity Upgrade on Demand (CUoD)). Utility CoD allows clients to install processors and have them automatically activated as needed on a minute-to-minute basis.

These modular systems are designed for high availability, with an extensive set of RAS capabilities to compliment their processing power, I/O expandability, virtualization technologies and growth-on-demand features.