IBM gives servers boost with Power5

With an eye toward helping users consolidate and improve server performance, IBM this week plans to unveil a new line of midrange and high-end servers based on its Power5 technology.

The company's rollout of p5 servers is expected to include two-, four-, eight- and 16-processor boxes. Sources say the new eServer p5 systems will be available later this year. IBM declined to comment.

The new p5 family marks another step in IBM's effort to converge its two 64-bit server lines - the pSeries, which runs AIX (IBM's version of Unix), and the iSeries, which runs the i5/OS operating system. The i5/OS is an updated OS/400 that was introduced with the new eServer i5 systems in May. IBM began shipping eServer i5 servers last month.

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With an eye toward helping users consolidate and improve server performance, IBM this week plans to unveil a new line of midrange and high-end servers based on its Power5 technology.

The company's rollout of p5 servers is expected to include two-, four-, eight- and 16-processor boxes. Sources say the new eServer p5 systems will be available later this year. IBM declined to comment.

The new p5 family marks another step in IBM's effort to converge its two 64-bit server lines - the pSeries, which runs AIX (IBM's version of Unix), and the iSeries, which runs the i5/OS operating system. The i5/OS is an updated OS/400 that was introduced with the new eServer i5 systems in May. IBM began shipping eServer i5 servers last month.

"The hardware for the p5s and the i5s is virtually identical on this fifth-generation product line," says Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64. "The i5 is typically a little more expensive because it has the i5/OS bundled into it, but if you strip out the OS, customers will see that the p5 and i5 are identically priced."

The i5 and p5 will each support AIX, i5/OS and Linux, which gives users greater flexibility. They also will share features such as micropartitioning and IBM's virtualization engine, which lets multiple instances of an operating system run a single box.

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"Now the Unix or OS/400 choice is just a choice of software, not of hardware," says James Governor, principal analyst at RedMonk. "These systems can run each other's applications and operating environments. This is huge flexibility and will be a major win for any shop running both platforms."

Like the i5 servers, the new eServer p5 will rely on modular components, sources say. For example, the four-processor modules can be tied together to build much larger machines, giving customers the ability to increase the number of processors and the resulting processing power of the systems.

The Power5, like the Power4, is a dual-core chip, meaning that there are two processors on one core. But on the Power 5, each processor can run two application threads simultaneously, reducing idle time and making the server more efficient.

Both i5 servers and the new p5 servers will support IBM's Virtualization Engine technology, which combines mainframe-like portioning capabilities with features such as workload management, system provisioning and grid services. IBM says Virtualization Engine will let users deploy and manage compute resources - regardless of operating system - as a single pool that grows and shrinks according to application demands.

A key feature of Virtualization Engine is the ability to divide systems built on Power5 into as many as 10 partitions per processor, so a four-way box could be sliced into 40 partitions. In today's pSeries servers, partitions can only be as small as a single CPU.

Brian Perlstein, senior technical consultant in the Design and Infrastructure group at Oakwood Healthcare in Dearborn, Mich., says he's eagerly awaiting the p5 systems because of the increased power, flexibility and partitioning capabilities.