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IBM Plots iSeries Machines Out to 2010 by Timothy Prickett Morgan One of the main concerns of any company that adopts a particular server platform is the longevity of the platform. No one likes to be blindsided when a server maker suddenly stops making or supporting a particular platform. Because the AS/400 and the iSeries were never high-volume servers, and because IBM always seems to have bigger priorities, OS/400 customers have always been a little jumpy. 
There are very few certainties in life, but I can provide the best kind of certainty you can ever get in the server business. My sources at IBM, who are in the know on these sorts of things, tell me that IBM has a roadmap for Power-based iSeries servers on the Power7 platform that extends into 2010 at least. Now, granted, roadmaps can change. Just look at what happened at Compaq in mid-2001, when it ditched everything for Itanium, and then what happened in late 2001, as Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq and then set about to merge its very many server product lines. The HP 3000 and the AlphaServer were stopped pretty much in their tracks, and are in maintenance mode. HP will support them until 2011, but don't expect any big price/performance increases like the ones the company is showing with its Itanium 2-based Integrity line of servers. I've been digging around IBM Rochester to get an idea of what Big Blue will be up to in the next couple of years. As I said last week, when I ranted off my iSeries and OS/400 wish list, IBM has just entered another engineering product planning cycle for its iSeries server just as it is in final development of the Power5-based "Squadron" servers, which are expected to ship sometime in the first half of 2004. What I found out for sure is that, in 2004, there will not be a "January Surprise," like we had this year when IBM rather suddenly revamped the iSeries line with the OS/400 Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition packaging. While my sources tell me that IBM will eventually deliver the Power5 processor across the entire iSeries product line--this is not exactly news, of course--what they also say is that there will not be a major iSeries announcement in the first quarter of 2004. So the machines you see today are the ones you will be able to buy next year. My sources will say no more. The Squadron servers will apparently come in two flavors: a machine that scales to eight-way symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and a machine that scales to 64-way SMP. The target speed of the Power5 processor is in the range of 1.5 to 2 GHz using 130 nanometer technology, and IBM will be able to crank the clock up to around 3 GHz or so, using 90 nanometer technology, in the late 2005-early 2006 timeframe. The Power5 chip has a larger L2 cache, at 1.9 MB, than the Power4/Power4+, and it includes a larger outboard L3 cache (36 MB per core), and an on-chip main memory and an L3 memory controller. (See "IBM Talks Power5 at Hot Chips Conference" from the August 25 issue of this newsletter for a lot more details on the Power5.) IBM is saying that the hardware-assisted chip multithreading (CMT) support in the Power5, plus the higher clock speeds, will yield a 64-way machine that has four times the OLTP processing power as the original 32-way iSeries "Regatta-H" Model 890 server using the 1.3 GHz Power4 processors. With over 800 GB/sec of memory bandwidth, this big Squadron machine is going to be a screamer on many different workloads, including OS/400 workloads based on RPG and Java. Sometimes it's what IBM doesn't say that is important. What has been obvious for years is that there is no rush to the highest possible performance in the iSeries line. If that were the case, OS/400 would be running on a new iSeries that looks very much like the new pSeries 615, which uses two 1.45 GHz Power4+ processors. Similarly, the iSeries Model 890 would have the new 1.7 GHz Power4+ processors, and so would the Model 870, now that I think about it. I get the impression from the people I talk to at IBM that they are focused on an eventual roll out of the Power5 in the iSeries, but that they are not in any hurry. There's no question that IBM will work its tail off to get the Power5 chips into the pSeries, since its rivals are building fast midrange and enterprise boxes using the Itanium 2 processors from Intel. (IBM still smokes anything by a huge magnitude, on single processor performance with the Power family of chips, including its venerable zSeries mainframe processors, which can't hold a candle to the Power4+.) I also got the impression that Power4+ machines might happen, but then again they might not. IBM has had yield problems with the Power4+, which debuted in midrange and entry machines, and it may not want to promise something to the iSeries channel that it cannot deliver, whether it is a Power4+ or a Power5 machine. IBM can easily meet most demands for processing capacity for the iSeries line using S-Star and Power4 processors. That said, my sources say that the iSeries will nonetheless get the Power5 and Power5+ processors. So it looks like IBM's immediate plans for the iSeries for 2004 are not exactly clear, and that is not because IBM doesn't know what it is doing, but because it is keeping secrets. That brings us to Power6 and a related project known as ECLipz. If you want to make IBM stop talking, start talking about ECLipz. A few months ago, I got my hands on some internal roadmaps from IBM about ECLipz, which, according to this documentation, is a Power6-generation project that was started in late 2001. The project name suggests a few things. First, "ipz" obviously refers to iSeries, pSeries, and zSeries, or so one might surmise. "ECL" is a little tougher to crack, but the "E" could be for eServer, the "C" could be for something like Consolidated, and the "L" could be for Linux. I showed this document to some IBM sources, and soon thereafter I got a denial (not attributable to anyone, mind you) that what this document clearly said--that the ECLipz processor, as Power6 was known, would be used across all non-Intel IBM servers--was not true, and that heads rolled because this roadmap said so. I'm not so sure I believe this. But IBM's top brass (including Bill Zeitler, who heads Systems Group) has been quoted in the trade press recently as saying that IBM will maintain distinct platforms for mainframes and other IBM Power-based machines. The roadmap mentioning ECLipz is from sometime in 2003 (date unknown), so it is not that outdated. But for all I know, IBM started this project to consolidate the zSeries line into the Power line and it did not work. This would not be the first time IBM tried this. The Fort Knox and Future Systems projects that tried to consolidate IBM's mainframe and midrange lines decades ago failed, too. This is hard stuff, which is why vendors don't do it. So ECLipz could be alive or dead. Only IBM knows. One interesting aside: the original code-name for the "T-Rex" zSeries 990 mainframes (using the eighth generation, or G8, CMOS mainframe engines) was "Galileo," and the G9 series of machines (which may or may not be in development right now) was code-named "Copernicus." Galileo was the first person to use a telescope to view the moons of another planet, and tried to create a system to use the eclipses of the moons of Jupiter to determine longitude and latitude of a location on earth. The Inquisition cut that research short. It was Copernicus who moved the sun, not the earth, to the center of our universe. Maybe this means something, maybe not. Forget the mysteries of code names for now. What I do know about Power6--and this is the important thing, as far as iSeries shops are concerned--is that the iSeries line will use it, even if the zSeries mainframe does not. The Power6 will be implemented in a 65 nanometer copper/SOI/low-k process that will allow IBM to push up clock speeds to 4 GHz and higher, according to my sources. The other interesting thing is that, when Power6 comes out (late in 2006 or early in 2007), it will be, according to my sources, available at very low prices, which will allow IBM to put it into affordable entry iSeries (and presumably pSeries) servers. Power6 and Power6+ will be used in iSeries servers through 2008 or so. (I am fervently hoping we don't have to wait until 2006 or 2007 to get an affordable entry iSeries machine, and the indications are that we will not.) What the Power7 and Power7 plus chips might look like, and how they will be used in iSeries machines in 2009 and 2010, IBM itself doesn't have more than the inkling of an idea. These processors and their related servers are only the ideas and dreams of engineers right now. In the next few weeks, I'll give you the inside scoop on some of the innovations and changes that are coming with the next two generations of iSeries servers. For one thing, IBM will be making these servers a lot more reliable than the current Regatta-class machines. I will also talk about how on-demand computing, integration, and systems management will be improved in the iSeries line. Other Articles in This Series
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