IBM Power Systems advantages

Power architecture:

POWER® processor technology is an instruction-set architecture that spans applications from consumer electronics to supercomputers. POWER is built on an open architecture, making it an open ecosystem that supports freedom of design. Learn more about the world of POWER at www.power.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

POWER7 processors provide the foundation for designing workload optimised systems in conjunction with software and expert domain knowledge. To achieve maximum performance, POWER7 processor-based systems are designed with workload optimising technologies. For example, Intelligent Threads technology dynamically switches the processor threading mode to deliver optimal performance for different workloads. TurboCore mode also offers the option to optimise the system for frequency and cache utilisation delivering the maximum per core performance for database and transaction workloads. Active Memory™ Expansion helps reduce memory costs by enabling physical memory to be logically expanded up to 100 percent for some workloads—such as SAP.

Power is integrated design and development

A totally integrated approach to the design, development, and testing of each and every Power server ensures the resiliency required for today’s IT infrastructure. All POWER7 server models include innovative reliability, availability and serviceability features that help you avoid unplanned downtime. And, with Capacity on Demand, Hot-Node Add and Active Memory Expansion—Power Systems enterprise servers ensure you can keep your most important applications available, even as you add capacity to handle new business demands.

Power Systems are also optimised with the ability to securely run multiple applications on AIX®, IBM i and Linux® operating systems on a single server—so you can manage fewer systems with lower cost and higher utilisation. No longer do you need to manage complex and inefficient server farms with each server dedicated to a single application or operating environment. Now you can consolidate workloads and significantly reduce costs throughout your infrastructure, while dramatically improving your ability to meet changing processing demands.

Power Systems Software™ options enable you to manage both physical and virtual environments, including the capability to control data centre energy usage and orchestrate processing resources to better meet business goals. And Power solutions are designed to provide you with a road map to continuous availability of mission-critical applications—even when an expected or unexpected interruption occurs.

Today's POWER7 systems combine industry-leading performance, scalability and modularity to enable you to get the most from your investment and build a flexible, responsive infrastructure that easily adapts and grows based on your business needs. With a virtualisation hypervisor built into every Power System, all performance benchmarks are achieved in a virtualised environment, unlike competitive systems that can be subject to lower performance when using third-party virtualisation software.

These systems also leverage IBM’s mainframe heritage and experience in building the most available UNIX®, IBM i and Linux systems in the industry. POWER processor-based systems have long been known for mainframe-inspired reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features such as First Failure Data Capture. We extended that capability to include Processor Instruction Retry, Alternate Processor Recovery, Partition Availability priority, Live Application Mobility, and Live Partition Mobility. These features are designed to help enable you to eliminate systems related planned and unplanned outages.

Power is modular and scalable servers and blades

IBM has a full range of Power systems from Blades and 2U rack systems to the industry’s most powerful and scalable UNIX system, the Power 795, and the worlds largest Power 7751 Supercomputer. Each of these systems delivers leadership performance and scalability in its class.

IBM Power 795: The most powerful UNIX system ever with up to 256 processor cores and 8 TB of memory enables capability to consolidate up to 1,000 Virtual Machines.

IBM Power 780: Modular high-end system with up to 64 cores and 2 TB of memory in four nodes delivers leadership flexibility, scalability and resiliency vs. all other competitive UNIX servers.

IBM Power 775: Supercomputer that shares Watson’s DNA and through the worlds highest performance and energy efficiency dramatically reduces project concept to delivery time for the toughest challenges in science.

IBM Power 770: Innovative modular server that provides non-disruptive growth from four to 64 processor cores, all with enterprise class RAS.

IBM Power 755: An ENERGY STAR-qualified high performance computing cluster node, designed for extreme parallel processing with 32 processor cores.

IBM Power 750 Express: ENERGY STAR-qualified for server consolidation and virtualisation projects, features one to four processor sockets and six to 32 processor cores. The server used by Watson.

IBM Power 740 Express: For small- to mid-size databases or as a consolidation platform with one or two processor sockets with four to 16 processor cores and 256 GB of memory.

IBM Power 730 Express: Designed for rack to rack consolidations in dense IT environments with two processor sockets and eight to 16 processor cores.

IBM Power 720 Express: Designed for distributed application servers or integrated business solutions with one processor socket and four to eight processor cores.

IBM Power 710 Express: Infrastructure and application servers with one processor socket, and a choice of four to eight processor cores.

IBM BladeCenter PS700, PS701, PS702, PS703, PS704 Express: Cost and energy efficient blades for application workload virtualisation with four to 32 processor cores.