IBM adds four servers to Power10 lineup

IBM is expanding its Power10 server lineup with four new midrange and scale-out systems designed for on-premises, data-intensive and business-critical workloads.

The new Power S1014, Power S1022, Power S1024 and Power E1050 platforms cover a range of workloads.

The E1050 is a four-socket system optimized for data-intensive enterprise workloads. In terms of how it ranks, the E1050 is a step below the top end of the Power10 portfolio, which is the existing E1080 four-socket rack server.

The new scale-out systems are the single-socket S1014, described as ideal for entry-level SMBs and remote offices, and the S1022 and S1024 systems, which are two-socket systems aimed at higher-end uses.

The Power S1022 scale-out server is optimized for cloud-native, containerized environments, while the S1024 targets the data analytics space and high-end apps like SAP/HANA. Both servers use transparent memory encryption, enhanced isolation and Trusted Boot to help prevent emerging side-channel attacks without impacting application performance.

Power10 is a different design from x86. It comes with 15 SMT8 cores, meaning each of the 15 cores has eight threads. This gives a single Power10 CPU effectively 120 threads.

Other security features include a quadrupling of AES encryption engines and much faster math acceleration for AI training. IBM is claiming 10x, 15x, and 20x faster AI inference for FP32, BFloat16, and INT8 calculations, respectively.

The new servers run several operating systems: AIX, IBM’s flavor of the venerable Unix operating system; Linux; and IBM i, the former OS/400 mid-range OS. For optimized workload deployment across on-prem and public cloud, all servers have consistent automation and management built on Red Hat OpenShift and managed with IBM Cloud Pak.

IBM recently added a consumption-based pricing model as a purchase option along with outright acquisition. It’s a little late compared to HPE, Dell, and Lenovo, but let’s be honest, hardware is hardly IBM’s business these days; software, consulting and services are. And it should be noted that IBM has a public cloud service while the other OEMs don’t.

Its consumption-based offering is a mouthful: IBM Power Systems Private Cloud with Shared Utility Capacity. It includes pay-as-you-go options and by-the-minute metering by IBM.

Like other consumption models, IBM offers more hardware capacity than the customer needs and it sits off, unused. Should the customer be in need of expanded capacity, the idle hardware is activated, then it’s shut down when no longer needed.