- New systems announced as record number of customers migrate from the competition to IBM Power Systems
- Industry’s highest TPC-C benchmark result beats HP and Oracle by wide margin
- New high-end system is five times more energy efficient than comparable UNIX systems from HP and Oracle
- New entry POWER7 servers designed to meet the demands of midsize companies – starting at less than $6,500
IBM today announced new POWER7 systems designed to manage the most demanding workloads and emerging applications, including a high-end system that offers markedly better energy efficiency than competitive systems from HP and Oracle.
IBM also announced a pair of developments that illustrate the company’s continued momentum for Power in the $13 billion UNIX market, in which IBM has experienced a 14-point revenue share gain since 2005.
- A record 285 customers moved critical business workloads to IBM systems and
storage from the competition in the second quarter of 2010, including 171 from
Oracle and 86 from HP. More than 2,600 companies have switched from the
competition to IBM Power Systems since IBM established its Migration Factory
program four years ago. Of particular note, IBM’s business helping customers
reduce x86 server sprawl by consolidating to Power increased four-fold over the
first quarter.
- IBM achieved the industry’s highest ever TPC-C (transaction processing)
benchmark result using a Power Systems configuration with DB2, hitting
10,366,254 tpmC. The IBM result delivered the follow breakthrough results
including:- Performance more than 2.5 times better than HP’s best result, 69 percent
greater performance per core, and 2.1 times better price/performance. - Performance more than 35 percent better than Oracle’s best performance
result, 2.7 times better performance per core, and 41 percent better price
performance.
- Performance more than 2.5 times better than HP’s best result, 69 percent
In addition, IBM calculations on the IBM configuration show it requires 35 percent less energy per transaction compared to the energy usage data published by Oracle on the Oracle configuration.
The new systems – servers, software and IBM’s industry-leading PowerVM virtualization capabilities – allow customers to better manage ever-increasing amounts of data in an interconnected world and to conserve energy and floor space in burdened data centers. They are part of a year-long rollout by IBM of workload-optimized systems for the demands of emerging business models such as smart electrical grids, real-time analytics in financial markets and healthcare, mobile telecommunications, and smarter traffic systems.
New technology from IBM announced today includes the new high-end IBM Power 795 system; four entry-level POWER7 processor-based servers designed specifically for mid-market clients; and a POWER7 processor-based workload-optimized Smart Analytics System that helps businesses draw real-time information from massive amounts of data.
The new 256-core IBM Power 795 offers more than five times better energy efficiency compared to servers from Oracle and HP. It uses IBM’s leading-edge EnergyScale technology that varies frequencies depending upon workloads. This new system supports up to 8 terabytes of memory and provides over four times the performance in the same energy envelope as the fastest Power 595 IBM POWER6 processor-based high-end system.
The new POWER7 technology supports four times as many processor cores as prior systems and uses the latest PowerVM virtualization software to allow customers to run over 1,000 virtual servers on a single physical system, enabling a substantial improvement in operating efficiency. For the many customers nearing capacity limits for energy, space and cooling in data centers, consolidating older systems to the new high-end Power 795 could result in more headroom – with energy reductions of up to 75% for equivalent performance capacity – allowing for workload growth in existing data centers and helping companies to potentially avoid or reduce the cost of expanding or building new data centers.
IBM also announced Power Flex, a new environment composed of two or more Power 795 systems, PowerVM Live Partition Mobility and a Flex Capacity Upgrade on Demand option. This solution enables clients to shift running applications from one system to another to perform system maintenance without downtime, helping to balance workloads and more easily handle peaks in demand.
IBM also announced a new version of IBM’s UNIX operating system, AIX 7.
