IBM's New POWER7 Machines Work with 8 x 32 Threads

The largest of the new IBM machines presented February 8 in New York has the number 780 and up to eight POWER7 processors (see the Gallery). Among the new machines, the 780 racer goes beyond their performance as the only one running in so-called TurboCore mode, which using cache handling can draw even more out of the individual cores , mainly for databases and other transaction-oriented applications. Also with 64 cores is the somewhat smaller IBM Power 770. With the Power 755 and 750 Express, the former is intended as cluster for computationally intensive, high performance scenarios, its second slightly toned down smaller brother is right for a business server for the SME market. The 780 and 770 machines will hit the market in March and the 750 and 755 series earlier on February 19. No prices are mentioned yet.

The new POWER generation is set on parallel processing. Each POWER7 has 32 hands: it has eight cores, each running four threads. The new models' management software can also be turned on and off in various modes to optimize the workhorse for parallel processing, throughput or analysis. IBM also trimmed its software palette for parallel processing. The Websphere application server, DB2 database and Lotus Domino collaboration suite are notable examples. The POWER7 also includes IBM's Active Memory Expansion technology, which through memory compression can make applications believe that they've got 50% more available RAM. Possible applications are virtual environments and SAP programs.

Details on the POWER7 systems, which are compatible with Linux, IBM's AIX UNIX and System i, and their management software are on IBM's product page. IBM's media page also has a video that brings the new computer generation a bit closer.