Today IBM introduced a new series of GPU-accelerated systems capable of handling massive amounts of computational data faster and at a nearly 20% better price performance than comparable Intel-based systems – providing clients a superior alternative to closed, commodity-based data center servers.
The vastness of Big Data—of the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data generated on the planet every day—provides a challenge for organizations to build powerful technology infrastructures to meet these growing demands. The commodity servers used today by most organizations are built on proprietary processor technology and are increasingly stretched to their limits by workloads related to Big Data, cloud and mobile demands. In contrast, IBM is designing a new data centric, approach to systems that leverages the building blocks of the OpenPOWER Foundation.
The new IBM Power S824L servers are built on IBM’s POWER8 processor, the world’s first processor optimized for the most demanding Big Data workloads, The new systems tightly integrate IBM and other OpenPOWER member technologies, including NVIDIA’s GPU accelerator technology for the first time, to unleash unprecedented computing performance to help enable banks to better analyze risk, energy companies to more precisely locate oil reserves, and scientists to more quickly identify cures for diseases.
POWER8 Portfolio Expands
Other additions to IBM’s POWER8-based Power Systems portfolio include:
- Power Enterprise Systems: Built with the fastest performing core and fastest performing server chip in the industry[2], and supporting nearly 1,000 SAP S&D users per core (2.2X the closest competitor), the new Power Enterprise Systems expand the line-up from the POWER8 based scale-out servers introduced in April and are designed and optimized for the demands of enterprise data and computing environments. The new Power E870 and Power E880 Systems feature additional processing power with up to a massive 192 cores* with more than 1500 threads of compute power available. Based on the choice of 32 or 48 cores per node, the Power E880 is also available with up to128 cores* with 1028 threads of compute power. Both configurations are available with up to 16TB* of memory. Capable of running AIX, IBM i, and Linux operating systems, the new Power Enterprise Systems are designed for clients to confidently support the most demanding, mission-critical environments.
- Power Enterprise Pools: Delivering the most powerful foundation for private, public, and hybrid cloud infrastructure, Enterprise Pools offer extreme flexibility and instant response to changes in workload or infrastructure. They enable clients to move resources across a pool of systems to match workload demand, ensure system availability, improve efficiency, and protect investments while transitioning to POWER8.
Software/solutions being released as a complement to the above systems along with systems announced in April 2014 include:
- IBM Data Engine for Analytics – Power Systems Edition: Combining POWER8 Scale-out systems with IBM’s flash-based Elastic Storage technology and Platform Computing software, this new analytics appliance offering can use a third of the storage infrastructure as required by an x86 based solution.
- IBM Data Engine for NoSQL: Combines a CAPI-enabled Power System S822L with IBM FlashSystem 840, Ubuntu Linux and Redis Software, providing clients throughput improvement with 40TB of Flash memory, 24X server consolidation and marked reductions in energy and acquisition costs associated with fewer servers. The solution can provide significant server consolidation to clients given that it can replace the capacity of 24 separate Intel servers.
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