Take a Sneak Peek at IBM Power9

The tech world is eagerly anticipating the release of IBM Power9 in the second half of 2017. Information about the features of Power9 started coming out after the Hot Chips 2016 show. With its development of Power9, IBM is continuing its battle with Intel’s x86, the king of the server chip market.

Intel’s high profit margins have caused some of its customers to search for other suppliers. While Intel still dominates with 90% of the market, IBM would like to steal a 10 to 20% share by 2020. By providing an alternative chip for hyper-scale data centers that also meets the demands of cognitive analytics, IBM may just have the chance. Power9 far exceeds the performance levels of Power8 while allowing for additional flexibility.

What to Expect from IBM Power9

Sure, IBM Power8 was designed specially to handle big data, but IBM Power9 was built for what IBM CEO, Ginni Rometty, has labeled the cognitive era. Power9 processors accommodate hyper-scale data center workloads and enable machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Power9 promises to double the performance capabilities of Power8. The chip has shrunk from 22 to 14 nanometers for greater cache and contains 24 processor cores. Power9 also takes advantage of PCI-Express 4.0, which doubles the previous bandwidth available to reach up to 16 gigatransfers per second.

Multiple ports enable Power9 to work with a variety of accelerators to ramp up performance even more. The chip is compatible with graphic user interfaces, field-programmable gate arrays, and application-specific integrated circuits.

Power9 Chip Options

Power9 will be available in 2 main versions.

• Power9 SO is designed for machines and clusters that have either 24 cores and 4 threads or 12 cores and 8 threads. Power9 SO can accommodate 2 memory sticks per channel that can be directly attached without a buffer.
• Power9 SU uses a buffer, but can support 2x as many memory sticks for a total of 32. The chip is designed for machines with 4, 8, or 16 sockets.

There are 4 variants of the 2 main versions of Power9. One is meant for scale-out clusters of machines with 1 or 2 sockets. The second is meant for scale-up memory machines with 4 sockets. The scale-out version provides huge capacity, while the scale-up version offers super low latency with more bandwidth.

Versions of each type of chip are available with either 12 or 24 cores per chip for a third and fourth variant. The variant with 12 cores is available with a high level of threading. The 24 core variant works with Linux while the 12 core variant works with PowerVM.

Big Power9 Wins for Big Blue

The Motley Fool reports that IBM has already scored 2 big wins with Power9 before its release. The US Department of Energy chose Power9 for 2 of its supercomputers, Summit and Sierra. With the help of Power9 and IBM partner, Nvidia, Summit is gearing up to be the fastest computer in the world with the ability to process 200 petaflops.

Google and Rackspace have taken advantage of the OpenPOWER Foundation’s spirit of collaboration to work together to develop Zaius, a server architecture based on Power9. The new architecture is part of an Open Compute hardware design project.

The Best Is Yet to Come with Power9

With more than 150 members in the OpenPOWER Foundation, more development projects from major players are bound to materialize as the release of Power9 approaches.

More excitement is to come. Always thinking ahead, IBM has already planned the release of 2 more versions of Power9 by 2020. New versions will introduce micro architecture and new processing technology. With these developments around the corner, it’s never too soon to start planning for how adopting Power9 will help your business move into the cognitive era.