IBM Power8

2014

The presentation of Power 8 in Russia

IBM provided in May, 2014 in Russia the Power8 processor and servers constructed on its basis focused on systems with horizontal scaling, such as server farms and cloud environments^[1].

Earlier IBM advanced in a horizontal segment servers with architecture of Intel x86, and POWER processors were aimed at the high-performance systems with vertical scaling. However at the beginning of this year IBM sold business on release of x86 servers to Lenovo company, but at the same time did not begin to leave perspective horizontal area, having decided to compete with Intel.

The matter is that now the main engine of growth of IT market are private and public clouds. For implementation of this technology of the enterprise and providers of cloud services build huge DPCs with horizontal scaling. IBM wants to use this trend. "There were many tasks which require huge number of cheap servers. At the same time reliability and capacity of servers are not so important. The main thing — the low price and a possibility of easy replacement" — Perevozchikov Alexey, the product manager and to the solutions IBM Power Systems in Russia and the CIS considers.

However servers based on POWER always differed in reliability and performance, but not low price. Therefore traditionally in horizontal area servers with architecture of x86, and after the actual leaving of AMD from the market of processors of the highest price category dominated, almost entirely Intel got this segment.

To press processor giant on this promising glade, IBM took actions for several directions. First, the company developed the new POWER8 processor with a set of improvements and provided the first servers on its basis. It is a line from five servers of the lowest price class (the price in the USA from 7973 dollars) intended for creation of systems with horizontal scaling.

Secondly, IBM cardinally changed approach to production of systems based on POWER. Many years she independently developed this processor architecture and servers on its basis, but recently decided to follow a way of openness. "IBM departs from proprietary approach, opens the architecture and enters interaction with other players" — Alexey Shelobkov, the Head of Department of hardware of IBM in Russia and the CIS told.

The matter is that in August of last year IBM announced creation of consortium OpenPOWER which members can license architecture of POWER and a message on its basis own developments. "With respect thereto at us the economic basis considerably improved — Alexey Perevozchikov explained. — It was quite good earlier, but now it became essentially best of all. So, 34 servers on the POWER8 processor of initial level provide the same performance as 100 servers x86 of the same level. At the same time the place, the electric power, housekeeping overheads, etc. are saved"

Provide such characteristics, according to him, the improvements which appeared in POWER8 allow. So, performance improvement at vertical and horizontal scaling is reached due to increase in number of cores up to 12 (one and a half times more, than in POWER7). Increase capacity for the tasks exacting to an exchange rate with memory, the expanded size of a cache allows. "Intellectual" innovation — the chip of the OZU buffer which manages exchange with OZU depending on a task priority is intended for optimization of work with memory. The PCIe Gen 3 controller which is built in a crystal serves for reduction of a delay at input-output transactions.

There are many other new products, but Alexey Perevozchikov paid special attention to the CAPI interface (Coherence Accelerator Processor Interface) intended for the approved connection of accelerators: "Modern systems a lot of time are spent on the small repeating transactions, such as compression, enciphering, etc., using for this purpose the universal processor. IBM decided to provide to such tasks special processors and for this purpose gave to developers of such accelerators direct access in a shared memory. It opens new opportunities for integration of the equipment".

OpenPOWER consortium members are engaged in development of accelerators, some of them already provided the first products.

Besides, in terms of economy the important role is played by reducing costs for service. "Today about 45% of cost of ownership of servers within three years are the share of service. IBM tries to automate as much as possible such processes" — Alexey Perevozchikov told.

Though the consortium OpenPOWER is at the initial stage of development, it already includes many leading companies, including Altera, Google, IBM, Mellanox, Micron, Nvidia, Samsung, PowerCore and Tyan, and all more than hundred applications are submitted.

There are first results of OpenPOWER-projects. So, Google developed a motherboard prototype on POWER8 intended for own use. The perspective is very important to drag Google on the party for IBM. The search giant is the largest customer of Intel and if it transfers to POWER8 at least a part of the computing powers, it can urge on also others.

In the same direction also the Tyan company, the prime vendor of motherboards for Amazon works. Besides Tyan is going to transfer the specification of a reference payment to community OpenPOWER that other participants could execute own developments on its base.

Many Chinese companies participate in OpenPOWER. As Alexey Perevozchikov explained, it allows China to release completely Chinese servers with the Chinese processors: "China already on anybody does not depend, and to it no sanctions are scary. Perhaps, as such experience would be useful to Russia too". The truth of IBM it can backfire if China executes the intention to prohibit banks to use servers of IBM.

As for customers by which IBM is guided, according to Alexey Shelobkov, on the one hand, it is a segment of large enterprises, traditional for IBM, and with another — providers of cloud services: "Now the segment of the low-end servers changed. Big customers became need servers of the bottom level for internal clouds and as more and more enterprises place the data in clouds, in IT market there were customers, new to us, there are providers of cloud services which build at themselves server farms".

Expanded portfolio of the IBM Power 8 systems

On October 7, 2014 the IBM company provided an expanded portfolio of the IBM Power 8 systems.

In addition to the Power S824L systems with GPU accelerators, as a part of the IBM Power Systems portfolio on the platform of Power 8 processors:

• IBM Data Engine for NoSQL. Integrating the innovative technologies of consortium members of OpenPOWER Redis Labs, Canonical, Altera and IBM, this solution considerably reduces basis of cost value of placement of data warehouses of NoSQL. The solution contains the software of Redis Labs, the Ubuntu Linux operating system from Canonical, the programmable logic integrated circuit from Altera and the unique Power System S822L CAPI system with IBM FlashSystem 840. By means of consolidation of computing resources it is possible to use one server on POWER8 platform instead of 24 systems on the basis of Intel processors for full-size NoSQL-storage. Repeated reduction of cost value is implemented exactly thanks to the small occupied space and the corresponding decrease in energy costs. Customers can implement new opportunities and increase NoSQL storages, using 40 TB flash memory within one server.

• IBM Data Engine for Analytics – Power Systems Edition. Integrating systems based on POWER8 with technology of elastic data storage based on a flash and the software of Platform Computing, a third of the infrastructure of data storage required by solutions based on architecture of x86 can use this new analytical solution. (6)

• Power Enterprise Systems. The new Power Enterprise Systems systems expand a line of servers of horizontal scaling on the basis of POWER8 provided in April, 2014 and are optimized for loadings of exacting corporate applications and computing environments. The new Power E870 and Power E880 systems are the most productive 8-socket servers providing support up to 1000 virtual memory systems on one computing system.

At a possibility of use up to 32, 40 or 48 main cores and up to 4 TB memories on the computing module, these systems are created for increase in modular efficiency and scaling up to 192 cores with assistance of 1500 flows of computing powers and 16 TB memories. The Power Enterprise Systems systems can work under control of AIX, IBM i and Linux, offering clients reliable support of the most exacting applications.

• Power Enterprise Pools. Offering a powerful basis for the private, public and hybrid cloud systems, Enterprise Pools provide unsurpassed flexibility. Power Enterprise Pools give to customers an opportunity to distribute resources in "bullet" of systems for compliance to requirements regarding loadings, providing system availability, improving efficiency and protecting investments upon transition to POWER8.

The new IBM Power Systems systems will be available to the order since October 31, 2014.

2015: IBM about superiority of Power over x86

On June 16, 2015 one of developers of IBM Power processors called them more profitable in comparison with chips on architecture of x86. It is about a ratio of performance to the price.

In the blog IBM Smarter Computing Brad McCredie, the vice president for development of Power and the president of the OpenPower Foundation organization, wrote that servers with a configuration based on Power8 are more productive in comparison with the comparable systems under control of new Xeon E7 v3 and E5 v3 processors. In confirmation of the statement Brad McCredie gave the results of measurements issued by the diagram in a benchmark package of Spec CPU 2006.

IBM says that the architecture of Power exceeds x86 regarding a price/performance ratio

"The diagram shows that the solutions OpenPower have superiority in performance counting on one spent dollar. At the same time to correspond to the level of efficiency OpenPower, Intel Xeon chips need more cores. It, in turn, leads to the raised expenses on purchase of the licenses tied to quantity of main cores for such software products as DB2, Oracle Enterprise Edition, WebSphere Application Server, Oracle Web Logic Enterprise Edition and others" — Brad Makkredi noted.

It is necessary to tell that IBM compared processor architecture h86 and Power more than once, pointing out only advantages of the development. So, in the company emphasized that each core of Power can process eight flows, at the same time capacity of the interface of memory makes 192 Gbytes / with on one socket that is three times faster in comparison with normal than x86 processor.

The fact that IBM considers Power by the strong contender of x86 is confirmed by sale in 2014 by the company of the business connected with release of the System x servers on Intel processors. Instead of them the producer offered servers of the Power Systems family with the S index indicating their capability to horizontal scaling.

The OpenPower Foundation non-profit organization which in addition to its founder of IBM, also includes the companies Google Samsung Nvidia, Rackspace and others promotes architecture of Power.^[2]

Notes