IBM Announces New Power10 Servers

[phoronix]

Phoronix: IBM Announces New Power10 Servers

IBM this morning announced more Power10 servers being added to their portfolio, now including mid-range and scale-out platforms based on this latest POWER architecture...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=IBM-New-Power10-Servers

[RedEyed]

Can somebody tell me who is using POWER architecture nowadays?

Thanks!

[NobodyXu]

Can somebody tell me who is using POWER architecture nowadays?

Thanks!

I believe the customers of IBM are mainly banks who requires reliability and performance.

[RedEyed]

I believe the customers of IBM are mainly banks who requires reliability and performance.

I believe everyone require reliability and performance from hardware

[NobodyXu]

I believe everyone require reliability and performance from hardware

Banks require extra reliability and robustness while still requiring low latency for their customers.

Imaging if your bank lost a record because one machine/cluster fails, or a transmission error, or the data being corrupted.
That is absolutely going to be a nightmare for them.

Also, if your transactions (such as shopping) takes more than a few seconds to submit and process, customers will be annoyed and just leave them.

[pkunk]

Can somebody tell me who is using POWER architecture nowadays?

Thanks!

Same people who are using COBOL.

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/6.4?topic=wn-video-what-is-new-in-enterprise-cobol-zos-64

[schmidtbag]

IBM stands out from competitors for a few reasons:
1. They support very outdated tech, so long as you pay them.
2. They have on-site support that is quick to respond and can get obscure parts within the same day.
3. They were [one of?] the first to do hot-swappable PCI and PCIe cards.
4. They heavily prioritize redundancy and reliability. Some of their most expensive servers are pretty self-reliant. Not only do they have redundancy just about everywhere except the motherboard itself, but they have their own built-in UPSes and refrigerant systems, just to make 100% sure that the server will not go down.

So basically, IBM is ideal for those where you simply cannot afford downtime. Nowadays, that's becoming less relevant with things like blazing fast network speeds, improved security, better performance for scripting languages (so you're not locked to an architecture from compiled binaries), and Kubernetes.

IBM is kind of the Sears of the computer world: they used to be the biggest of their kind, and stood out with their reputation. But they used their reputation as a crutch while the market changed, and they chose not to adapt. I don't see IBM lasting a whole lot longer if they don't hurry up with their quantum computer research.

[WorBlux]

Can somebody tell me who is using POWER architecture nowadays?

Thanks!

z/OS and a few specific application that benefit from a single massive address space (petabytes or RAM) - you can have 4 power chips on a board, and with interconnects, configure rack-scale systems where a process on one cpu can directly access memory of any bit of the system.

Also there's OpenPOWER, which has release a soft-core design, is the ISA chosen by LibreSOC, not to mention Raptor Systems.

[Dawn]

Same people who are using COBOL.

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zo...e-cobol-zos-64

No. z/OS runs on z, not Power.

There are a few kinds of Power customers.

Some are running i, IBM's unique object-
oriented operating system. There are a lot of i sites (over 100k) but most of them are smaller (sometimes as small as one core activation) and upgrade infrequently. These sites typically have apps in RPG, often with Java or PHP on the side. These sites are often running inventory management or payroll apps.

There's also the traditional RISC/UNIX market - in which IBM is the last player actively doing R&D since HP/Intel and Oracle/Fujitu threw in the towel. These users stick with Power and AIX because of very high per-core performance (which determines licensing costs on things like Oracle DB) and high scalability in a single monolithic system (Power10 can scale to 16 sockets.) These users tend to be larger - banks, governments, factories, etc - and willing to pay a premium for Power value-adds.

Lastly, there is also a smattering of Linux. Some are HPC users that took advantage of the ability to direct-attach NVlink graphics. Some just have demanding apps that benefit from Power's high memory bandwidth or unique cache hierarchy.

[Dawn]

z/OS and a few specific application that benefit from a single massive address space (petabytes or RAM) - you can have 4 power chips on a board, and with interconnects, configure rack-scale systems where a process on one cpu can directly access memory of any bit of the system.

Also there's OpenPOWER, which has release a soft-core design, is the ISA chosen by LibreSOC, not to mention Raptor Systems.

Power isn't z. See my post above. Z is a distinct CISC CPU family with its own ecosystem.