Power5+ to Probably Ramp to 2.2 GHz in IBM p5 Servers Soon

Published: February 2, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Earlier this week, IBM announced that it had put a new 2.2 GHz Power5+ processor into its System i5 (formerly iSeries) line of high-end midrange servers, and the expectation is that this chip will soon wind its way into the System p5 (formerly pSeries) line.

Last October, IBM delivered its first Power5+ chips in the p5 servers, including the 1.9 GHz dual-core module (DCM), which is based on a new, 90 nanometer chip process that allows IBM to speed the chip up compared to the 1.5 GHz and 1.65 GHz speeds of the Power5 chips that were launched for entry and midrange machines in the summer of 2004. With the System i5 announcements this week, IBM also put out a 2.2 GHz module that is used in the i5 570 machine. This server has two processor sockets, and each Power5 and Power5+ chip has two cores, so that makes the base i5 570 box a four-core server. Up to four basic i5 570 chasses can be lashed together through the "Squadron" chipset to make a 16-core box. IBM announced a quad-core module (QCM) running at 1.5 GHz last fall, but did not offer it in the System i5s, since it is aimed at high-performance and ultra-dense computing.

It seems likely that the System p5 line will get this faster 2.2 GHz Power5+ chip soon, probably in the p5 570 first, since that machine was not upgraded last October. The i5 595, a 64-core box that uses a multi-chip module (MCM) that puts four Power5 chips on a single block (and therefore has eight cores), was upgraded from 1.65 GHz to 1.9 GHz last week, bringing it on par with the p5 590 and 595 machines that were announced last summer. The question now is when IBM will get faster Power5+ MCMs out the door for these high-end servers. IBM's original Power5 roadmaps from a few years ago seemed to indicate that the company was shooting for the 2 GHz to 3 GHz range for the Power5+ chips in 2006. For whatever reason, the clock speeds for the Power5+ chips are coming in a little lower than many customers and all of IBM's competitors expected. IBM has a compelling lead on a lot of benchmarks, but the UltraSparc-IV+ processor from Sun Microsystems and the future "Montecito" dual-core Itaniums from Intel, which are used in Hewlett-Packard's Integrity servers, will start closing those gaps, and already have on a few tests.

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