IBM’s High-Powered POWER8 Systems Harness Big Data

By Darryl K. Taft

IBM launched its new POWER8 systems at the Open Innovation Summit in San Francisco, which was co-hosted by IBM and the OpenPOWER Foundation. Senior Vice President of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group Tom Rosamilia (left) and IBM General Manager of Power Systems Doug Balog (right) unveiled the new systems, the first servers created with OpenPOWER technology to help companies manage massive amounts of data at high-performance speeds.

IBM announced a series of new Power Systems servers tuned for Linux. The systems can help clients convert data into insights by managing increasingly complex and data-intensive workloads. Shown here is the IBM Power Systems S824, which has the ability to run Linux, AIX and/or IBM i operating systems concurrently.

The new Power Systems culminate a $2.4 billion investment and three-plus years of development. One of the new S Class servers, the Power Systems S814, provides users with the flexibility of running Linux, AIX and/or IBM i operating systems concurrently.

Built on IBM’s POWER8 technology and designed for an era of big data, the new IBM Power Systems S Class servers can analyze data up to 50 times faster than similar x86-based systems, IBM said. Shown here is the IBM Power Systems S822L, one of the two POWER8 S-Class servers that run Linux exclusively.

With the release of these S Class servers, IBM delivers an open alternative to PC-era technology and creates a processing platform for new innovation, flexibility and diverse capability from across the vast computing ecosystem. Shown here is the IBM Power Systems S812L, which runs Linux exclusively.

IBM’s S Class servers help reduce data center costs—including floor space, power and cooling costs. With twice the data throughput compared with the latest commodity x86-based servers, the new Power Systems can help cut data center footprints in half. Shown here is the IBM Power Systems 822.

IBM Power Systems Characterization Engineer Ruby Zgabay (left) and IBM Power Firmware Engineer Andrew Geissler (right) handle components of the new IBM POWER8 system. The two are members of the global Power Systems team.

IBM Power engineers Andrew Geissler (left) and Adriana Zobylak (right) work on the new POWER8 stack. The first POWER8-based systems to debut are five Power Systems S-Class servers designed for large, scale-out computing environments. POWER8 systems are targeted at big data environments.

The IBM POWER8 processor is a sliver of silicon that measures just one square inch, and is embedded with more than 4 billion microscopic transistors and more than 11 miles of high-speed copper wiring.

Doug Hill, Barry Bernu and Paul Manuel (shown from left to right) of Evolving Solutions, an IBM business partner, install a new IBM Power Systems server into the company’s data center in Minnesota.