Power10 Systems Get Storage And I/O Enhancements

October 16, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

There is a spring-fall cadence to the Power Systems platform from IBM, and so when the second batch if Technology Refreshes come around this time of year, we expect to see some hardware updates, too.

In recent years, we have been hoping – as always – that there would be a Power8+ or Power9+ processor enhancement around halfway through those processor family cycles, because that usually provides a price/performance kicker. But this has not happened during this generation as it did with the Power4+, Power5+, Power6+, and Power7+ generations. And we intend to put the pressure on IBM for a Power10+ enhancement in 2024 now that we see there has not been one here in October 2023.

IBM did, however, make a few changes to its Power10 hardware lineup that you need to be aware of, and they are all encapsulated in announcement letter AD23-0422.

First, there is a new I/O expansion drawer and related fan-out modules based on PCI-Express 4.0 technologies that replaces the rather old PCI-Express 3.0 ones in the product line. The I/O expansion drawer is feature #ENZ0, and it is a 4U high rack mounted unit, and up to two of the feature #ENZF fan-out modules can be placed inside the drawer. These FOMs each have four PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots and two x8 slots, and with both you have eight x16 slots and four x8 slots. Each FOM connects to the feature #EJ24 or #EJ2A controller cards. The following features can be plugged into the feature #ENZ0 expansion drawer:

#EC2S: PCIe3 2-Port 10Gb NIC and ROCE SR/Cu Adapter
#EC2U: PCIe3 2-Port 25/10 Gb NIC and ROCE SR/Cu Adapter
#EC72: PCIe4 x8 2-PORT 25Gb EN ConnectX-6 Lx SFP28 NO Crypto LP Capable Adapter
#EN26: PCIe4 x16 4-PORT 25/10/1 GbE NIC and RoCE SR/Cu LP Capable Adapter
#EN2W: PCIe2 4-port 10GbE Adapter
#EN0S: PCIe2 4-Port (10Gb+1GbE) SR+RJ45 Adapter
#EN0U: PCIe2 4-port (10Gb+1GbE) Copper SFP+RJ45 Adapter
#EN0W: PCIe2 2-port 10/1GbE BaseT RJ45 Adapter
#5899: PCIe2 4-port 1GbE Adapter
#EN1E: PCIe3 16Gb 4-port Fibre Channel Adapter
#EN1J: PCIe4 32Gb 2-port Fibre Channel Adapter
#EN1C: PCIe3 16Gb 4-port Fibre Channel Adapter
#EN1A: PCIe3 32Gb 2-port Fibre Channel Adapter
#EN1L: PCIe4 32Gb 4-port Fibre Channel Adapter
#EN1N: PCIe4 64Gb 2-port Fibre Channel Adapter
#EN2L: PCIe4 32Gb 4-port Fibre Channel Adapter
#EN2N: PCIe4 64Gb 2-port Fibre Channel Adapter
#EJ2B: PCIe3 12Gb x8 SAS TAPE HBA W/4X HD MINISAS, LP Capable Adapter
#EC6K: PCIe2 x1 USB 3.0 2-port LP Capable Adapter
#EJ37: PCI3 x4 Crypto Coprocessor Gen3 Blind Swap Cassette LP Capable Adapter IN

Obviously, because PCI-Express 4.0 is backwards compatible with PCI-Express 3.0, you can plug the older devices into this expansion drawer. However, the new I/O drawer is not forward compatible and therefore you cannot plug PCI-Express 5.0 devices into this drawer. There are, however, PCI-Express 5.0 slots on the Power10 server motherboards and risers.

IBM also has two new Ethernet controller cards in a PCI-Express 4.0 form factor for Power10 machines that support the RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) protocol, which provided InfiniBand-like low latency links over Ethernet. Both are based on technologies from Nvidia’s Networking division, formerly known as Mellanox. Feature #EN24 is a low profile and feature #EN26 is a full height version of the four-port Mellanox ConnectX-7 Lx EN adapter, which support SFP28 ports running at 1 GB/sec, 10 Gb/sec, and 25 Gb/sec speeds. The other card, feature #EC71 low profile and #EC72 full height, is based on the two-port Nvidia ConnectX-6 Lx EN adapter and runs at the same 1 GB/sec, 10 Gb/sec, and 25 Gb/sec speeds.

IBM is also reducing the number of NVM-Express U.2 flash drives it is supporting in the Power10 lineup while still maintaining multiple sources for each kind of drive. This is made possible because these vendors have agreed to adopt a common custom card identification number (CCIN) that allows them to be interchangeable as far as operating systems and firmware are concerned. Which means IBM can have a feature number that has multiple products from different vendors underneath it. Here are the feature numbers and capacities for the converged drives:

The new U.2 module for IBM i features ES5B, ES5D, ES5F, and ES5H are available for the Power E1080, Power S1024, Power L1024, Power S1014, and Power S1022s servers. The new U.2 module for AIX/Linux features ES5A, ES5C, ES5E, and ES5G are available for Power E1080, Power E1050, Power S1024, Power S1022, Power S1014, Power L1024, Power L1022, and Power S1022s servers.

IBM also says that you can install a pair of Titanium-class 1,200 watt power supplies in the Power S1014 server as well as in the 7063-CR2 Hardware Management Console.

And finally, PowerVM Enterprise has now been renamed to PowerVM since there is no longer an Express or Standard Edition, which was just complicating things.

The new features will be available on November 17.

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