What Can IBM Do To Make The Future Power S1112 Mini System Compelling?

April 13, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The Power11-based Power Systems lineup remains incomplete, with the single-socket, half-width “Bonnell” system that debuted back in May 2024 still only available with Power10 processors and not yet upgraded to Power11. We know such a machine is in the works, because Big Blue has been clear about the need to ship a machine in the IBM i P05 software tier, the lowest rung on the IBM i ladder.

We have not heard anything precise about the Bonnell kicker, and we would have thought it would have been launched in February or March. It has not. It is reasonable to expect it to come out around the time of the POWERUp 2026 conference, which runs from May 19 through 22 in New Orleans. It would be unusual if that were not the case, but we live in unusual times. IBM may be in no hurry to put a new Bonnell machine into the field even though it does really need to give customers who want Power11 a P05-class system.

Right now, if you want a new P05-class machine, you can use the Power S1012 Bonnell machine, or a regular rack or tower configuration of the Power S1014 with only four cores activated on the system board. There are also Power8 and Power9 machines that have lower core counts that are priced in the P05 tier as well.

In the absence of the Bonnell kicker based on Power11, we are wondering what IBM might do to improve upon the Bonnell design. The Power11 package has some power distribution and efficiency enhancements that have allowed for the clock speeds to be raised a few percent, so it is reasonable to expect that. This would not be much of a barn burner announcement when you put it that way. In a real sense, Power11 was only an incremental step.

We would like for IBM to do better, and do something specifically for P05 customers.

The first thing is to create a hybrid disk-flash storage sled that slides in next to the Bonnell compute tray. Something that manages the placement of data on the disk and the flash to optimize for price/performance on storage, not for raw performance. We live in a world where main memory and flash prices are going nuts, and if the Power S1112 Bonnell+ system is going to do right by entry IBM i customers, it should aim for a lower-cost storage option because entry customers are very price sensitive. IBM can’t just assume they will spend more on flash than they do on compute. Considering that P05 machines with one to four cores running IBM i often have crimped main memory, it is important to have IBM i do hierarchical storage management across main memory, flash, and disk transparently and efficiently.

The second thing we would do, and this is particularly true for any single-core and maybe dual-core machines, is to overclock the hell out of the CPUs. In theory, the Power11 chip can get up into the 5 GHz range. Many IBM i shops could give a care about energy efficiency, but they would care if their many batch jobs finished a lot faster. The overclocking could be keyed, in fact, to nighttime batch runs, not to online transaction processing workloads commonly embodied in ERP, CRM, and SCM systems that typically run on the IBM i platform.

The third thing we would do is offer shadow Red Hat Enterprise Linux partitions with IBM’s AI tools running in those partitions so customers can get a feel for how they might start adding AI functions to their applications. A starter kit version of the Watson.X stack would be appropriate, with wizards to link to it and possibly Project Bob acting as a front end to integrate AI development with VS Code IDEs. If IBM wants to get customers using its AI tools, the IBM i base is the biggest customer base that it has in terms of unique customers, even if it does not drive as much revenues as the AIX on Power and System z mainframe bases. You have to bring all customers along for the GenAI ride.

It seems very unlikely that IBM will offer the Power11-based Bonnell+ kicker that the same price as the discounted Power10-based Bonnell system from two years ago, but that would be nice. Call that ask number four, then.

We wonder how well the Bonnell machines sold, and what IBM’s enthusiasm is for the effort. Big Blue has been pretty quiet about it. But then again, it is generally pretty quiet about Power Systems and spends a lot of its time talking up System Z mainframes. Just go to the IBM homepage and try to find Power Systems or IBM i without using the search engine and you will see what I mean.

So as a fifth ask, we would like that to change. We would like IBM to talk as much about Power Systems as it does System Z.

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