IBM Launches 1.9 GHz Power4+, Tops TPC-C Rankings

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM this week divulged that it would indeed be launching a much-rumored 1.9 GHz version of the Power4+ processor in its pSeries Unix server line. IBM has not formally announced the processor as it does most products, but decided instead to tell the world about the faster chip by releasing a TPC-C online transaction processing benchmark that put it at the top of the ranking in terms of performance and price/performance for high-end systems.

The pSeries 690 "Regatta-H" server used in the test was configured with 16 of the dual-core Power4+ processors running at 1.9 GHz, up from the 1.7 GHz clock speed that IBM was able to deliver last year. The pSeries 690 was configured with 1 TB of main memory and 74 TB of disk capacity; it ran the AIX 5L 5.2 operating system and the DB2 8.1 database, both from IBM. The availability of the system is scheduled for August 16, 2004, which means customers who need such a machine today can only get it on a special bid basis from Big Blue. At list prices, this Regatta-H server cost $4.3 million, and the FAStT storage arrays it used cost another $4.5 million. Adding in the cost of software and services for three years drove the total cost of the system under test to $10.6 million, and after a hefty 47 percent discount, the cost dropped to $5 million. This machine was able to do 1,025,486 transactions per minute (TPM), which yielded a price/performance after discounts of $5.43 per TPM.

IBM appears to have cut the cost of processors and main memory in half compared to last year's Power4+ systems and then applied a big discount to get this very low price/performance. This may be a good indicator of where pricing for the Power5-based "Squadron" servers will be when they start rolling out later this year.

Back in November, Hewlett-Packard was the first vendor to crack the 1 million TPM ceiling when it delivered a TPC-C benchmark result for its 64-way Itanium 2-based Integrity Superdome server running its HP-UX operating system and the future Oracle 10g database. That Superdome machine used the 1.5 GHz "Madison" variant of the 64-bit Itanium processors from Intel. That machine was also configured with 1 TB of main memory and 38.3 TB of disk capacity, which allowed it to deliver a performance of 1,008,145 TPM at a cost of $8.33 per TPM after a staggering 48 percent discount. The Superdome server cost $7.1 million, with the 1 TB of main memory accounting for $5m of the cost. HP-UX and Oracle 10g cost $1.4 million, and the disk storage cost $5 million. Application server hardware and software made up the remaining $17.9 million of the cost of the Superdome set up tested. That tested configuration will not be available until April 2004, probably when HP will support the larger memory.

IBM has not yet said when it will formally announce the 1.9 GHz Power4+ chips and whether or not they will be available in the eight-way pSeries 650 or 16-way pSeries 670 servers.