IBM has introduced a new version of the server that powers the Dow Jones.
Daniel Amorim, the company's SA System P business development manager, yesterday said the latest System p570 is an ultra-powerful server that leverages its new Power6 chip's breakthroughs in energy conservation and virtualisation technology.
Amorim boasts that Power6 is the fastest microprocessor ever built. "The new server is the first to hold all four major benchmark speed records for business and technical performance.
The records include the three most widely used performance benchmarks for Unix-based servers - Specint (measuring integer-calculating capability common in business applications), Specfp (measuring floating point-calculating capability required for scientific applications) and TPC-C (measuring transaction processing capability). As it stands, System p570 already holds more than 20 benchmark records.
Amorim says that, at 4.7GHz, the dual-core Power6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation Power5, while using almost the same amount of electricity to run and cool it.
"This means customers can use the new processor to either increase performance by 100%, or cut power consumption virtually in half," he adds.
Looking ahead, Amorim says IBM is already testing Power6 chips at 6GHz. Power6 is nearly three times faster than the latest Intel Itanium processor that runs competitor HP's server line, he notes.
Not only performance
Amorim is particularly pleased the Power6 chip is the first Unix microprocessor able to calculate decimal floating point arithmetic on hardware. The built-in decimal floating point capability gives tremendous advantage to enterprises running complex tax, financial and ERP programs, he says.
<B>Power6 facts</B>
* The frequency of the Power6 chip is 25 million times as fast as hummingbird wings.
* The frequency is equal to the per-second heartbeats of two-thirds of humanity.
* The Power6 processor has bandwidth like a fire-hose - enough to download the entire iTunes music catalogue in 60 seconds.
* The chip weighs less than an ounce, but is twice as powerful as the 1.4-ton Deep Blue supercomputer that defeated Garry Kasparov 10 years ago this month.
"This means you can do very complex mathematical calculations at very high speed." As a result, he expects good uptake from banks, auditors and other financial players.
IBM officials claim it is the world's most powerful consolidation machine, containing hardware and software that allows it to create many "virtual" servers on a single box.
Another Power6 feature provides customers the ability to move live virtual machines from one physical Unix server to another, while maintaining continuous availability.
"To date, this could only be done by powering down the application," Amorim says.
This partition mobility function enables customers to move active virtualised partitions without temporarily suspending them. Once they make the paradigm shift, this will allow administrators to think of large groups of servers as a fluid resource rather than focusing on each server as a single entity with a dedicated purpose.
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