New Power10 Systems from IBM Can Deliver Three Times More Performance

Posted by Abel Willium on February 3rd, 2022

Power10 for IBMi, AIX, and Linux

Power10 will offer impressive performance improvement and hardware features over the existing AS400 iSeries power9 software. But as of now, we are not sure how the Power10 processor will affect IBMi, AIX, and Linux. After the hardware availability, IBM AS400 iSeries will release a new OS version and technology in terms of capabilities, processing speed, data transfer, virtual machine, encryption, and in-memory workload improvements. One can expect more exciting OS-based capabilities in Power10 next year.

Impressive Architecture Specs

The specs on AS400 / I-series Power10 are quite exciting, and the architecture is more than that, even if it is not what chip-watchers were expecting. Based on a 7nm processor, IBM was able to pack 18 billion transistors onto a 602 sq mm piece of silicon, up from 8 billion with Power9 (which was built on a 14nm process). The new chip features 128 MB of L3 cache, 32 MB of L2 cache, but the area in which it shines is its memory sharing capabilities that will expand IBM’s lead in that area.

IBM has partnered with Samsung Electronics, and Samsung manufactures the two versions of the AS400 I-series. The high-performing SMT8 features 8 SMT per core and 16 physical cores.

IBM will launch Power10s in a single-chip setup, with 16 sockets on board, and each socket will deliver 15 SMT8 cores running at 4GHz. Moreover, IBM is also developing dual-chip modules, featuring four dual-chip sockets and 30 SMT8 cores running at 3.5 GHz. This will allow IBM AS400 / I-series to deliver up to 240 threads per socket.

Data Transfer Enhancements

For keeping the processors fed with data, IBM has provided an array of mechanisms, and this is where AS400 iSeries Power10 architecture shines. The Power10 starter pack will feature two PCI-Express 5.0 controllers, each having 16 lanes running at a speed of 32GT/s, and this can reach up to 128 GT/s across all lanes. The PCI 5.0 controller was finalized in the year 2019, and this new architecture supports the new bus (which feature double bandwidth in comparison to PCI-express 4.0).

The PCI-Express 5.0 is fast, but IBM AS400 / I-Series Power10 is much faster than that. On both sides of the Power10 chip, there are a total 16 open memory interfaces (serializer and deserializer). Each memory interface has eight lanes wide (i.e., X8) and capable of delivering 32GT/s and up to 1TB/s of bandwidth. The open memory interface originally debuted with Power9 Kicker and will talk to DDR4 memory in the future.

There are four PowerAXON interfaces in each AS400 / I-Series Power10 chip that can connect to OpenCAPI interfaces or for grouping processors in a scale-up NUMA configuration. There are 16 PowerAXON serializer and deserializer blocks in an 8x configuration, providing 32 GT/s, or 1 TB/s of bandwidth, same as the OMI blocks.

Read More: https://www.integrativesystems.com/power10-systems-for-ibmi/