IBM Power Systems AC series

2017: IBM Power Systems AC922

In December, 2017 IBM provided the first server of new generation Power Systems based on the Power9 processor. The company says that this processor is created especially for work with intensive computing loadings of artificial intelligence technologies and is capable to improve time of a training of frameworks of deep learning almost four times.

The Russian office IBM reported to TAdviser that at the time of the announcement only one server of initial level – Power Systems AC922 is announced. Further servers of initial level for classical applications (database) and enterprise level servers will be announced.

IBM Power Systems AC922

In the AC922 server the new Power9 processor released on technology of 14 nanometers is used, in it in addition to bigger quantity of cores new versions of protocols appeared. For example, the NVidia NVLink 2 protocol which has by 5.6 times bigger capacity (bandwidth) in comparison with similar devices on GPU Nvidia V100 on x86 platform, declare in IBM.

Besides, the controller of PCIe Gen4 protocol with the doubled bandwidth in comparison with the existing devices on PCI Gen3 on x86 platform is built in the processor. In addition, CAPI protocol upgraded version compatible to the OpenCAPI protocol.

According to developers, the specified updates allowed to achieve the following results on different tests of machine and deep learning:

• Chainer – is 3.7 times faster, than on x86
• Caffe – is 3.8 times faster, than on x86

Besides the following results of acceleration of different databases and applications are received:

• Kinetica – is 1.8 times faster, than S822LC for HPC
• CPMD – is 2.6 times faster, than on x86

The price of the new server at the time of the announcement is not announced, but in IBM noted that it will be competitive in comparison with the price of the comparable server based on the processor with architecture of x86.

The AC922 servers will be available to shipment from the plant, including to the Russian customers, since December 22, 2017. Some time in the market there will be servers both on the basis of the Power8 processor, and on the basis of Power9, reported TAdviser at the Russian office IBM.