IBM Power10 is Three Times More Powerful, Three Times More Efficient, and a Hybrid Cloud Specialist

Stephen Leonard from IBM compares  IBM Power Systems with a boutique hotel meeting the needs of customers[1]. IBM Power offers just as much adaptability a customer needs, "in the right place, reliable, secure, and with new standards for compactness, speed and energy efficiency”. The latest issue of this series, IBM Power10, is the first commercial IBM processor built with 7-nm processor technology. The processor is manufactured by Samsung Electronics, using a process similar to the 7-nanometer technology used by AMD, whose chips are manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

High-speed data processing on site

The processor is designed to allow enterprise customers to deploy on-site servers for reliable and secure high-speed computing, and it is designed to meet the unique requirements of hybrid cloud computing. To this end, IBM promises up to three times more energy efficiency per socket and up to three times greater utilization capacity in terms of users, workloads, and OpenShift container density.

IBM Power10 was developed over a five-year period with hundreds of new patents. IBM Power10 systems will be available in the second half of next year.

Hardware memory encryption without performance loss

The Power10 chip delivers hardware memory encryption for end-to-end security with faster cryptographic performance thanks to additional AES cores, both for today's leading encryption standards and for future encryption protocols (for example, quantum-safe cryptography and fully homomorphic encryption). In plain English: With IBM Power10 all memory is encrypted all the time - without software cryptography - to avoid performance degradation. To address the new security issues associated with the higher density of containers, the processor has been designed to provide new hardware enhanced protection and isolation features for containers, developed in collaboration with the IBM Power10 firmware team. Should a container be compromised, the Power10 processor is designed to prevent other containers in the same virtual machine (VM) from being affected.

Specialized in the hybrid cloud and OpenShift

IBM Power has long supported a wide range of flexible implementations for hybrid cloud and on-premises workloads combining hardware and software capabilities. IBM Power10 reinforces this support by pooling or clustering physical storage in a variety of configurations. Power10 systems will be optimized for Red Hat OpenShift - enabling the creation of future-proof enterprise hybrid clouds, IBM says. It is IBM's stated goal to make Red Hat OpenShift the standard choice for the hybrid cloud.

Memory Inception for mutual memory access

A new technology called ‘Memory Inception’ allows each of the IBM Power10-based systems in a cluster to access and share each other's memory, creating multi-megabyte storage clusters. For both cloud users and vendors, Memory Inception offers the potential for cost and energy savings because cloud vendors can offer more capacity with fewer servers, while cloud users need to lease fewer resources to meet their IT needs.

Power10 promotes the use of artificial intelligence

As artificial intelligence (AI) in transactional and analytical workflows is increasingly integrated into business applications, the use of AI inference is developing into a central component of enterprise applications. IBM Power10 provides advanced in-core AI inferencing capabilities without the need for special hardware. By offering AI software from IBM, Power10 is designed to help integrate AI workloads with typical enterprise applications to turn data into more meaningful insights.

Customers often desire to stick with the systems they have - especially if they have enjoyed the kind of performance and flexibility they have had with IBM Power Systems over the years. At the same time, AI and the hybrid cloud are no longer being called into question. IBM Power10 delivers AI and hybrid cloud capabilities to new customers and tens of thousands of existing customers - without the disruption and cost of a complete infrastructure overhaul.

UMB is the only IBM partner with Elite Speciality status for IBM Power and storage in Switzerland. Above-average know-how, both in IBM hardware as well as in software and service, guarantee excellent cooperation. Please contact us for further information.

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Power_Systems

[ii] https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-08-17-IBM-Reveals-Next-Generation-IBM-POWER10-Processor