IBM announced the launch of IBM Power E1080 server – powered by the new IBM Power10 processor – targeting hybrid cloud customers.
IBM is taking orders for the IBM Power E1080 now, with shipments expected to begin before the end of the month.
Dylan Boday, VP of Product Management for AI and Hybrid Cloud, said: “The E1080 is IBM’s first system designed from the silicon up for hybrid cloud environments, a system built to serve as the foundation for our vision of a dynamic and secure, frictionless hybrid cloud experience.”
Enhancements for hybrid cloud like planned industry-first, by the minute metering of Red Hat software including Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 4x greater OpenShift containerized throughput per core vs x86-based servers, and architectural consistency and cloud-like flexibility across the entire hybrid cloud environment to drive agility and improve costs without application refactoring.
New hardware-driven performance improvements that deliver up to 50 percent more performance and scalability than its predecessor the IBM Power E980, while reducing energy use and carbon footprint of the E980, allowing customers to do more with less.
The E1080 features four matrix math accelerators per core, enabling 5x faster inference performance as compared to the E980.
New security tools designed for hybrid cloud environments including transparent memory encryption so there is no additional management setup, 4x the encryption engines per core, allowing for 2.5x faster AES encryption as compared to the IBM Power E980, and security software for every level of the system stack.
IBM is also launching a new Power Expert Care service to help clients as they protect their systems against the latest cybersecurity threats while also providing hardware and software coherence and higher systems availability.
Finanz Informatik is a long time IBM Power user.
Klaus Fehlker at Finanz Informatik said: “The new server addresses our demands to continue delivering our services at scale with high resiliency requirements, including new levels of security and improved energy-efficiency. We are also keen to see how the new features can accelerate our journey to hybrid cloud and the infusion of AI into our business applications.”
The IBM Power E1080 also has the capability to scale instantly with Power Private Cloud for Dynamic Capacity, allowing users to scale up and down with unused CPU capacity as needed and only pay extra for the additional resources they used. This can help improve operational efficiency and flexibility while avoiding server sprawl and lengthy procurement processes by bringing a cloud-like payment model to the datacenter.
IBM Power E1080 is the first on-premises system planned to support metering by the minute for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift, extending capabilities already available on IBM Power Virtual Server.
With IBM Power10 at the heart of the system, the IBM Power E1080 server can deliver up to 30 percent more performance per core and over 50 percent better total capacity at the socket and system level as compared to the previous generation IBM Power E980 server. This translates to 33 percent lower energy consumption for the same workload on the IBM Power E1080 as compared to the IBM Power E980x, giving customers the platform to consolidate workloads and save on hardware and software costs.
For example, an IBM Power customer projected that they could consolidate an industry-standard transactional database running across 126 x86-based servers down to two IBM Power E1080 servers. This projection would translate to an 80 percent reduction in server energy use and a 70 percent reduction in per-core software licenses for the customer.
IBM Power10 also provides new enhancements for securing consolidated workloads. The Power10 processor has the capability to scale with transparent memory encryption, which is designed to simplify and support end-to-end security without impacting performance.
Compared to IBM Power9, accelerated encryption performance is enabled by IBM Power10 having 4x the number of encryption engines per core, and translates into a 2.5x faster per core performance for AES encryption compared to the previous generation of IBM Power servers.
Finally, the IBM Power E1080 server and Power10 processor bring new enterprise AI capabilities right to where the data resides, on the server. IBM Power10’s four Matrix Math Accelerator (MMA) engines per core that can drive up to 5x improvements for AI inference as compared to the IBM Power E980 server.
