IBM Fleshes Out p5 Line with More Power5+ Processors

Published: February 14, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As expected, IBM today continued its revamping of its AIX-based System p5 line and its Linux-based OpenPower line with new servers sporting the Power5+ processor. IBM began equipping its pSeries machines with the Power5+ chips last fall in selected machines, and now everything but the big p5 595 servers, which span up to 64 cores, have the latest RISC processors from Big Blue. As part of the Power5+ announcements, IBM is also ditching the pSeries moniker, and its AIX servers are now called the System p5 machines.

IBM has jacked up the processor speed on the Power5+ processors to 2.2 GHz in some models of the System p5, which it had already done in one model in the i5/OS-based System i5 line in January. Most of the Power5+ chip cores in the System p5 line run at 1.5 GHz or 1.9 GHz, but there are some new 1.65 GHz variants that have essentially the same performance as the 1.65 GHz Power5 chips launched in 2004, but because IBM is moving from a 130 nanometer process with the Power5s to a 90 nanometer process with the Power5+ chips, the newer chips throw off a lot less heat because they are a lot smaller.

In addition to adding new Power5+ servers, IBM is for the first time delivering a desk-side or rack-mounted Power server based on its PowerPC processors. While IBM had probably been counting on companies like Apple to pump up the volumes on the PowerPC processors, now IBM is going to have to boost its own volumes. For many workloads, the performance, price, and thermal characteristics of a server based on the PowerPC processors is better than the full-blown Power5+ chips, which are dual-core processors but which are really intended for highly scalable midrange and enterprise servers.

The new System p5 185 does not, however, use the dual-core PowerPC 970MP chip, which was launched in a two-socket, four-core JS21 blade server a week ago for IBM's BladeCenter machines. That JS21 blade also comes with two single-core 2.7 GHz PowerPC 970MP chips (a dual-core chip with one core that is a dud), and a 2.5 GHz version of this has ended up in the System p5 185 server, which is also a two-socket server. (It is unclear why IBM didn't put the dual-core version of the PowerPC 970MP chip in the same two-socket server, but it may have to do with chip yields or with the fact that IBM wants to sell as many Power5+ chips as it can to spread the costs out for its development. Down the road, IBM could put the dual-core PowerPC 970MP into the p5 185 chassis.) The PowerPC 970MP chip has 1 MB of L2 cache.

The p5 185 runs AIX and/or Linux, just like that JS21 blade, and supports IBM's Virtualization Engine hypervisor as well, the first time IBM has deployed it on the 64-bit PowerPC chips (as distinct from its Power4 and Power5 chips.) That virtualization stack, which is called Advanced Power Virtualization on the p5 and OpenPower server lines, virtualizes the processors, offering up to 10 logical partitions per core, and networking and server I/O functions. IBM's AIX costs $150 per core on this box, the lowest price IBM charges for AIX. The p5 185 comes in a 5U desk-side chassis that can be mounted inside a rack; it supports from 512 MB to 8 GB of main memory, has five media bays, five I/O slots (four PCI-X, one PCI), dual UltraSCSI controllers, and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports. A base machine with one 2.5 GHz processor, 512 MB of memory, and no disk sells for $2,995. Adding the second processor increases the cost to $3,999. The p5 185 will be available on February 24.

IBM is also creating a workstation version of this machine, which is called the IntelliStation Power 185. Including a GTX4500p graphics card and a flat panel monitor, this machine costs $5,999 with one processor and $8,299 with two. Last fall, IBM announced the IntelliStation Power 285, which used 1.9 GHz dual-core module (DCM) versions of the Power5+ chip. These workstations have a lot more bandwidth, and they consequently cost roughly twice as much.

The single-socket p5 510 rack-mounted server got a Power5+ refresh today, too. The p5 510 is a 2U form factor machine that now spans from 1 GB to 32 GB of main memory and has four drive bays and three PCI-X slots. This week, IBM is switching to the 1.9 GHz Power5+ DCMs in the server and also adding the 1.5 GHz Power5+ quad-core modules (QCMs), which cram two whole Power5+ chips into a single package so they can share a single socket. The QCMs are akin to the packaging techniques that Hewlett-Packard created for its PA-RISC and Itanium products to get more computing units in the same number of slots and Intel has similarly done to create its early dual-core chips. The difference is this: IBM is using the approach to get four cores, rather than two, per physical processor socket. With a single 1.9 GHz core activated, the p5 510 costs $4,455, and activating the second core boosts the price to $5,483. The four-core p5 510Q model running at 1.5 GHz costs $8,536. IBM also shaved prices on the existing p5 510s from last year, which use 1.5 GHz cores, by 9 to 16 percent.

In the p5 520 line, which is a 4U rack-mounted or desk-side box with one processor socket, three media bays, eight disk bays, six PCI-X slots, and from 1 GB to 32 GB of main memory, IBM is adding four new Power5+ chip options. In last year's p5 520s, IBM offered Power5 SCM and DCM chips running at 1.5 GHz or 1.65 GHz and, in October, it launched the 1.9 GHz Power5+ DCMs. With the Power5+ lineup today, IBM is moving to 1.65 GHz SCMs and DCMs and 1.5 GHz QCM chips. The base p5 520 has a single core 1.65 GHz Power5 chip with no L3 cache and 1 GB of main memory; it costs $5,699, not including AIX. Moving to the DCM, which has the 36 MB of L3 cache activated, raises the price to $8,520. With the 1.5 GHz QCM installed (which has the 36 MB L3 cache activated), the p5 520Q costs $12,999.

Moving up the System p5 line to the two-socket p5 550, IBM is now shipping a slightly slower Power5+ processor after putting 1.9 GHz DCMs and 1.5 GHz QCMs in a revamped box last October. The p5 550 now has a 1.65 GHz DCM option, which costs $13,118 with two cores activated and $20,109 with four cores activated and a base 1 GB of main memory. AIX costs $385 per core on top of that. The p5 550 has a 4U rack-mounted or desk-side chassis, like the p5 520, but it supports up to 64 GB of main memory and has eight drive bays, three media bays, five PCI-X slots, and dual GigE and UltraSCSI ports.

And, with Sun Microsystems expected to launch its eight-socket, 16-core, Opteron-based Sun Fire "Galaxy" servers soon, Karl Freund, vice president of product marketing for IBM's System p5 division, says that Big Blue will be ready for it with a new machine called the p5 560Q. This machine is essentially two p5 550Q boxes, which were announced last fall, lashed together to create four-socket, 16-core box using the 1.5 GHz Power5+ QCMs. The p5 and i5 server lines from IBM use NUMA-like SMP clustering to lash midrange machines together into a single system image. The p5 560Q uses this electronics to put two 4U-sized machines together, and unlike other IBM machines, the configurations with four, eight, or 16 cores have to have all of the cores in the box activated at the time of purchase. The p5 560Q comes with 2 GB of memory, expandable to 128 GB across two frames. Each frame has six drive bays, two media bays, six PCI-X slots, dual GigaE ports, and two UltraSCSI controllers. A single drawer with four 1.5 GHz cores costs $38,641, with AIX costing $385 per core on top of that. The eight-core model costs $59,710, while the 16 core machine costs $113,714.

Freund says that IBM is very excited about the new System p5 570, which will break through the 1 million transactions per minute (TPM) barrier on the TPC-C online transaction processing benchmark test using the new 2.2 GHz dual-core Power5+ processors, which replaces the 1.9 GHz Power5 chip. IBM is also delivering a 1.9 GHz Power5+ DCM, replacing the low-end 1.65 GHz Power5 chip. The basic feeds and speeds of the p5 570 have not changed in this announcement cycle--the p5 570 is a four-chassis machine that spans up to 16 cores and up to 256 GB of main memory. It costs $10,720 to buy a two-core Power5+ board with eight memory slots and no cores activated; it costs $21,440 to activate one of those 2.2 GHz cores.

Finally, IBM has added a 16-core motherboard using the 1.9 GHz Power5+ DCM chips and an eight-core board using the 2.2 GHz Power5+ DCMs. The p5 575, you will remember, is at the heart of the "ASCI Purple" supercomputer built for the U.S. Department of Energy. The p5 575 has 288 MB of L3 cache, up to 256 GB of main memory, and crams all of this electronics, somewhat incredibly, into a 2U form factor. Up to 128 of these systems can be lashed together into a high-performance supercomputer cluster, with a maximum of 2,048 processors, using IBM's Cluster Systems Management software. (ASCI Purple is considerably more extended than this, of course, but Uncle Sam paid for that extension.) An eight-core 2.2 GHz Power5+ module for the p5 575 costs a comparatively low-priced $40,000, while the 16-core 1.9 GHz module costs $69,000. All of those cores are activated. As you can see from those prices, IBM is charging a pretty hefty premium for Power5+ cores when you want to use them outside of the HPC market. To activate eight 2.2 GHz cores on the plain vanilla p5 570 would cost $214,400.

IBM did not deliver faster p5 595 servers, which currently use 1.9 GHz multichip modules (MCMs) that put four dual-core chips and four L3 caches on a single piece of ceramic that is about the size of your hand. "Nobody has anything that comes even close to touching the p5 595," explained Freund. And while there was an expectation that Big Blue would get the clock speed up on those MCMs into the 2.5 GHz range, the company doesn't seem to be worried that this has not happened yet.

The new System p5 machines will all be available on February 24. They run AIX 5L V5.2 or V5.3, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP2, or Red Hat's Linux AS Update 3.