Samsung to manufacture IBM’s latest processor chip

IBM has launched a new processor chip for data centres with three times the capabilities of its predecessor, with Samsung set to handle the manufacturing

The IBM POWER10 has been designed over five years and is considered an important milestone in IBM’s roadmap for POWER.

With hardware co-optimised for Red Hat OpenShift, IBM POWER10-based servers will deliver the future of the hybrid cloud when they become available during the second half of 2021. Samsung Electronics will manufacture the IBM POWER10 processor, combining Samsung’s industry-leading semiconductor manufacturing technology with IBM’s CPU designs.

Some of the new processor features include:

• IBM’s First Commercialised 7nm Processor that is set to deliver up to three times improvement in capacity and processor energy efficiency within the same power envelope as IBM POWER9, providing greater performance.
• Support for Multi-Petabyte Memory Clusters with a breakthrough new technology called Memory Inception, designed to improve cloud capacity and economies for memory-intensive workloads from ISVs, such as SAP, the SAS Institute, and others.
• New Hardware-Enabled Security Capabilities that includes transparent memory encryption designed to support end-to-end security. The IBM POWER10 processor is engineered to achieve significantly faster encryption performance with quadruple the number of AES encryption engines per core compared to IBM POWER9 for today’s most demanding standards and anticipated future cryptographic standards such as quantum-safe cryptography and fully homomorphic encryption. This also brings new enhancements to container security.

“Enterprise-grade hybrid clouds require a robust on-premises and off-site architecture inclusive of hardware and co-optimised software,” said Stephen Leonard, GM of IBM Cognitive Systems. “With IBM POWER10 we’ve designed the premier processor for enterprise hybrid cloud, delivering the performance and security that clients expect from IBM. With our stated goal of making Red Hat OpenShift the default choice for hybrid cloud, IBM POWER10 brings hardware-based capacity and security enhancements for containers to the IT infrastructure level.”