Big Blue Expected to Launch New p5s Next Week

Published: February 9, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

At IBM's BladeCenter H server launch in New York this week, Bill Zeitler, senior vice president and group executive of Systems and Technology Group, confirmed that the company would indeed be launching new Power5+ System p5 servers next week. The exact machines being launched remains unclear, but IBM has already put Power5+ chips in a few entry and midrange boxes in the p5 line, and the odds favor the company rolling out the chip across all of the p5 machines.

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 two weeks ago, 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, and this may get a wider play in the product line. It is also possible that IBM is able to get the Power5+ clock speeds up higher than 2.2 GHz, too, including in the high-end, 64-core p5 595 servers.