IBM introduced the Power10 processor and its first use in its Power E1080 server back in September last year and launched the new IBM i OS 7.5 in May this year. Today it fills out the Power10 server line along with impressive performance results, new ways to buy, better security, new cloud integration capabilities and enhanced security. I was pre-briefed by Steve Sibley, VP IBM Power Product management and his team to bring you this analysis at launch.
New S and E class servers
There are four new servers. In particular:
- IBM Power S1014 – a 2U single socket server with up to 16 cores and 2TB memory. It is a small machine designed specifically for users of IBM i, a disproportionate number of which are based in Europe (and in especially Italy). It joins the S914 in its new IBM i software subscription offering, which covers software (i OS versions 7.2-7.5), hardware and technical support.
- IBM Power S1022 – a 1U dual socket server with up to 48 cores and 8TB of memory. It is designed for those building scale-out clusters, running container-based applications with OpenShift management.
- IBM Power S1024 – is a 2U server, in other ways similar to the S1022. It is designed to run SAP HANA in memory ERP applications of between 2 and 8TB . IBM has a long-term successful partnership with SAP, which uses its systems internally and has certified them for its RISE ‘business transformation as a service’ solution.
- IBM Power E1050 – a 4U 4 socket system with up to 96 cores and a maximum memory of 16TB. At launch IBM claims it out-performs all current x86 4 and 8-way servers from its competitors. It is a smaller version of the E1080, launched earlier.
Like previous generations all Power10 servers can run AIX, i OS and/or Linux, be managed by Red Hat OpenShift and run applications in PowerVM virtual machines.
The increased number of processing cores gives the new systems 2.5 to 3 times the system throughput of the equivalent Power9 systems. It has also improved its world-beating security features by adding transparent memory encryption, increased isolation and trusted boot to prevent side-channel attacks. They also sport increased memory bandwidth and reliability and integrated AI acceleration on each core to moving and analysing data more quickly.
Embracing the hybrid cloud infrastructure
IBM wants you to use Power10 servers, whether you buy and install them in your data center, pay only for what you use through its Power Private Cloud with Dynamic Capacity offering (not available on the S1014), or consume their processing through its Power in IBM Cloud PaaS. It also wants these systems to run modern Linux workloads based on containers and managed by OpenShift at scale, because they offer significant performance, cost and ecological advantages over the most highly specified x86 servers from Dell, HPE and others, while running the same software tools.
IBM’s sales of Power – like many other servers – declined during the pandemic; a process which is being reversed by the introduction of Power10 in September. If it echoes the development of Power9, we will see positive growth for the next two years or so. However I believe it will do better, due to the expansion of the ways it can be bought and its availability as a cloud service – to a lesser extent its use in Kyndryl which will be counted as sales rather than internal use. In the past few server customers could be persuaded to use anything other than x86 products, despite the obvious performance, price/performance and ecological advantages of Power, Sparc and Z. IBM should eventually reap these advantages when customers buy Linux workloads through the cloud without concern for the processor they run on.