IBM Launches p690

edyavno writes: "IBM just announced the launch of their new high-end Unix server p690. It's based on its new Power 4 chip, and is in the same category as just announced Sun's SunFire 15K. It also includes some mainframe level features and can be used either as a single large server or divided into up to 16 "virtual" servers, running any combination of AIX 5L and Linux. Here's yahoo article, and here it is from IBM itself."

Comments

Sure, it LOOKS powerful...

[UserChrisCanter4]

[sarcasm]But if you'll take a look, neither Photoshop Filter or Final Cut Pro benchmarks are even obtainable... obviously it pales in comparison to a Dual G4-800![/sarcasm]

*Warning* Rumor...

[FatRatBastard]

I know the new IBM kit is supposed to go head to head against the new Sun kit, but if The Inquirer is correct this may be the last salvo in the Sun vs. IBM unix war. Of course, I take this with a HUGE grain of salt, but stranger things have happened (*cough* *cough* HP/Compaq).

My question has been answered!

[scott1853]

"achieves leadership in business, scientific and Java performance benchmarks"

I had always been wondering what kind of system was needed to run Java apps at a decent speed.

Overview from IBM's website

[isj]

I grabbed this from IBM's website (http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hard ware/datactr/p690.html):

- Innovative, mainframe-inspired, datacenter-class UNIX
server.
- 8- to 32-way 64 bit SMP server utilizing the first ever
POWER4 dual processor on a chip which uses IBM advanced
silicon-on-insulator (SOI) copper technology.
- Up to 256GB of memory, 160 PCI slots and over 4.6TB of
internal storage.
- Supports up to 16 logical partitions (LPAR), helping to
consolidate workloads, reduce footprints and lower cost of
ownership.
- A dedicated Hardware Management Console that provides a
graphical user interface for configuring and operating the
system including a set of functions for managing LPAR
configurations
- State-of-the-art self-managing capabilities that improve
reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) and help lower
costs.
- Packaging in a new 24-inch rack with an integrated power
subsystem which accommodates a pSeries 690 system and up
to four I/O drawers.
- AIX clustering and future to attach to SP systems.

It looks very good. I just wonder what you would use 160 PCI slots for?

16 virtual servers?

[sporty]

I must admit this is kinda cool.. but can you run say, 16 copies of NT and have them all blue screen at once?(/joke)

Just curious...

Heeeeeyyyy....a new IBM machine....

[mystery_bowler]

First off...from IBM's site:

Self-healing architecture -- Built with technology from IBM's Project eLiza initiative, the p690 is the industry's only UNIX server that offers multiple layers of self-healing technologies that allow the server to continue operating, even through major failures and system errors.

Gaaah! I blew a hole through p690! But wait...it's...healing itself! :)

On a more serious note...which marketing direction is IBM taking on these things? I'm sure they're trying to sell at least some of their existing customers on these and keeping those customers on whatever OS they were running (AIX most likely). But for the new customers, are they pushing AIX harder than Linux? Are they actually pitching any Linux conversions to their existing AIX customers?

Re:*Warning* Rumor...

[Christopher Cashell]

The article makes some rather misleading comments, such as the stock price. . .

You can't directly compare stock prices without taking into account things like the number of shares outstanding.

For example, Sun has almost twice as many shares of stock out there, so even though it's stock price is lower, it's not quite as far off as it appears. (Market capitalization for IBM is $168B, and for Sun is $29B).

As things stand right now, I'd be very surprised if IBM made a bit for Sun, (although, as you say, stranger things have happened). IBM's been gaining in the Unix market for the past year or so, I think they'd be better off to wait a good bit longer before doing anything so drastic.

AIX and Linux

[Coz]

The AIX 5L release is "Linux-capable" - it should be able to run most "vanilla" Linux apps with recompilation.

That said, IBM has been pushing several of their AIX selling points into Linux, like their Journalling File System logical volume manager. Their system management tools are pretty good (no SMIT cracks, please) and they have good network management tools. I got out of the crystal ball business a while ago, but I imagine IBM would like to be spending their money "productizing" Linux on their platforms rather than supporting their own OS.

I'd say they're trying to take a piece of Sun's pie, and maybe try to keep some folks from moving to Win2K. Looks like a good price/performance system if you need that much to start with.

Wrong Comparision

[Doctor_D]

IBM's comparing their new server against the wrong Sun server. Here's why:

For unmatched UNIX system performance, the pSeries 690 can scale to a 32-way symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) helping to provide the scalability required to drive a UNIX datacenter.

A Sun Fire 15k contains up to 106 processors (72 with max i/o), a Sun Enterprise 10k contains up to 64 processors, and a Sun Fire 6800 contains 24 processors. Honestly this IBM server should be compared with either the 10k or 6800. It just can't scale as high as either the 10k or the 15k.

LPAR support for up to 16 UNIX or Linux partitions

Humm, first generation unix partitioning from IBM, or 5th generation partitioning from Sun (with help from Cray early on). BTW, a 10k can be in 16 partitions. No it doesn't require a domain to contain 4 processors--that's the max. A single board domain can have 1 i/o card, 1 cpu and some memory--typically a gig. The 15k and 6800 are similar, although the cpu/memory cards are typically maxed. It is *very* rare to find a company who would buy these sorts of systems to not max them out.

AIX 5L offers support for systems with up to 32 processors and 256 GB memory.

Wow, Solaris scales to 106 procesors in a single domain, with at least 1/2TB of memory. Besides, I'd bet there are more apps for Solaris than AIX.

*Note all of the quotes are from IBM's web page regarding the p690.

Re:Wrong Comparision

[heimdall]

I think you're missing a few things. First of all, yes it has 32 CPUs... but each CPU has two cores on it, i.e... it's more comparable to a 64 CPU box. Secondly, the CPUs have considerably higher benchmarks than Suns USIIIi's. The 6800's can only support 4 domains, total, split between two hardware segments. This will handle up to 16 domains. We still need to compare it to an E10K or a F15K. While an E10k can handle a single CPU on a board, the F15K CPUs are soldered onto the CPU/Mem boards, and thus are only available in unit of 2 or 4. Also, as IBM invented partition (xx/360-390 and AS/400), I don't know that I'd compare this "first generation" partitioning with Sun's "fifth generation" partitioning. (And they didn't get help from Cray early on... Cray WROTE IT early on, sold it to SGI, who then sold the C6400 to Sun and was renamed the E10K.)

I bet you're right... I bet there are more apps for Solaris, however when it comes to the apps that actually run on boxen this large, you're typically talking about an Oracle or DB/2 database, which are available for both platforms.

Both the F15K and p690 appear to be fantastic boxes. Only time will tell how they fare against each other.

Re:Wrong Comparision

[Jeffrey Baker]

The 15K has 106 CPUs, but they are the slowest CPUs on the market in SPEC benchmarks. The UltraSPARC III are slower than the 1300 MHz Power4, slower than the 833 MHz 21264B, slower than the 2000 MHz Pentium 4, slower than the 800 MHz Itanium in FP but faster in integer, and not any faster than the 1200 MHz Athlon MP. The only CPU that is slower is the 552 MHz PA-8600, and the UltraSPARC III barely beats it. The PA-8600 will be replaced imminently by the 750 MHz PA-8700, while the 833 MHz 21264B will soon be replaced by the astonishingly fast 1000 MHz 21264B.

But wait! you say, SPEC numbers aren't everything. Yes the 15K has some seriously inter CPU bandwidth and big-time scalability. Problem for the 15K is that the Power4's inter-CPU bandwidth makes the 15K look like a beowulf cluster running over appletalk. The Power4 has a two cores sitting right next to each other on the same die and can/does have four or more of these double cores wired together in the same package with 128 MB L3 memory bank. The Power4's system bandwidth is 92 GB/s, or 38 times higer than the UltraSPARC III.

It's time to euthanize the poor old UltraSPARC CPU line.

Re:Wrong Comparision

[Tower]

disclaimer: I'm an IBM employee (and have played with systems using the POWER4)

First of all, let me mention that the RS/6k S80 (two releases ago - prior to the p680) outdid the 10k, at reduced cost, with the previous generation of procs. 16 processors outdid 64 in many, many tests (including ones with real-world data movement).

As for partitioning... hmmm... let's think. IBM has been doing logical partitioning in AS/400 for a while, and on the S/390 (now the z-series) for quite some time... a few decades now. A lot of that experience went into this.

Regarding the POWER4:
Scalability: The eServer p690 is able to marshal up to 1,000 processors for high-performancesupercomputing duty, in applications such as Business Intelligence or seismic data interpretation. (think - the big supercomputers are right now POWER3, with several POWER4 systems in devel)

Raw power:
Our POWER4 processor can handle seventeen times more data than the UltraSparc III chip used in Sun's brand-new "Star Cat" top-of-the line F150000. Only 32 IBM processors outperform double the number of Ultra Sparcs - which draw much more power, create more heat and are less efficiently packaged than ours, which use modules developed for the eServer z900 mainframe. (The CPU numbers can be found in SPECmark, and from other benchmarks, including TPC-C, Javamarks, and some other fairly useless comparisons).

Re:Wrong Comparision

[Tower]

Just to back some more of that up:
Power4 (1.3GHz):
SpecInt2000: 783 - 808 (base - peak)
Specfp 2000: 1098 - 1169

UltraSPARC III (900MHz):
SpecInt2000: 438 - 467
Specfp 2000: 427 - 482

That, and the clustering of the cores on the MCMs allowing for massive inter-processor bandwith when all bound together makes quite a powerful machine.

Re:Wrong Comparision

[cartman]

I'm not meaning to flame, but your analysis was so flawed that I'm amazed it got moderated up to level 4. IBM's hardware is vastly superior to anything Sun has to offer.

First, even though Sun's E15k has 106 processors, only 72 of them are even directly connected to the memory fabric. The others are just PCI cards, with staggering latency, consequently they won't help transaction processing performance. The E15k actually has 72 usable processors; the others are there to impress people who measure system performance by "counting processors."

Second, the UltraSparc III is a notoriously weak performer. It can't even execute instructions out of order!! It is quite likely that IBM's POWER4 would outperform it by more than a factor of 2.

Third, although the p690 has only 32 processors, it has 64 cores. Each "processor" has two 4-way CPUs with a very low latency interconnect. The IBM product would be more accurately characterized as a 64-processor machine.

Fourth, the products from other Unix vendors (hp, ibm) always vastly outperform Sun's product with dramatically fewer processors. HP's new 16 processor box gets almost the same tpc rating as Sun's 64 processor E10k. IBM's old p680 with 24 processors almost doubled the performance of the E10k w/ 64 processors. Sun's most recent comments of "we've decided not to use industry-standard benchmarks any more" is likely because they always lose badly.

Sun's real benefit is in software (Solaris is way better than AIX and has more apps) and in the fact that they have one OS and one proc architecture (Solaris/Sparc) across their entire range of computers.

Don't compare with Solaris... compare with Linux

[jabbo]

AIX 5L is designed to run Linux apps with a recompile, or AIX apps without. Find me a Linux box that I can stuff 32 dual-core processors into.

Unless you're insane I don't believe you're going to tell me that there are more Solaris apps than Linux apps. AIX 5L runs the latter kind.

Besides, IBM techies have usually struck me as better qualified than Sun guys, although both are leagues ahead of almost any other company's.

Re:Differences between PPC G4 and Power 4 ?

[Gill Bates]

Overview of the Power4 processor:

Power4 is the processor that will be used in the next-generation RS/6000 and AS/400 systems (IBM eServer i-series and p-series). It is a high-performance VLSI chip that includes two 64-bit PowerPC microprocessors, connected at high bandwidth to an on-chip memory subsystem consisting of a shared L2-cache memory plus the directory and interface for a large off-chip L3, and with high-speed busses and I/O to enable efficient 8-way systems to be built on a single 4-chip module. The microprocessors will operate at > 1 GHz clock frequency and have processor-L2 cache bandwidths of 100 GB/s. The Power4 chip is divided into 12 units, some of which are being designed by multi-site teams. The Research team focuses on all aspects of VLSI design as well as design tools and methodologies. For the Instruction Fetch and L2 Cache Control Units, the circuit and physical design of the logic circuits (about 2M transistors for each unit) are done in Yorktown, the array designs in Poughkeepsie, and the logic and verification in Austin. Performance exceeding 1GHz is achieved at acceptable power levels using mostly static, custom-designed CMOS circuits for the dataflow. Synthesized logic, implemented using circuit books from a standard cell library, is used for most control circuits. The circuits are designed to be fabricated in IBM's 0.18 CMOS 8S2 Silicon-on-Insulator technology with 7 levels of copper wiring.

Oh yeah, these are great!

[Sir_Real]

I'm running one of these right now as my MASQ/NAT box... You should see how quickly fortune executes...

;-)

Re:SPEC numbers

[King Babar]

SPECint2000 Base and SPECfp2000 Base are single-threaded applications and the results only tests one CPU. I'd like to see how well it scales in performance at 32 processors. That thing could be one very powerful Oracle database server or an application server.

For what it's worth, the 32 processor 1.3GHz models claim an rPerf of 50.56, and all the number seem to scale about as you'd expect (e.g., not quite linear in # of processors).

But, sicko that I am, where I think the Power4 might really get down and dirty is in supercomputing applications. None of this sharing, caring relational database stuff. No siree; I'm into a much more serious kind of scene. This freaky baby was just built for LINEAR ALGEBRA, friend, and I've heard that she can keep on doing it it all night long! We're talking a *serious* FLOPhouse here, folks. But you've got to talk dirty to it, something like Hey, take a look at this generalized eigenvalue problem--have you seen a longer or harder one than...

Uh, excuse me; I guess I was losing my composure a bit back there. I've got both hands back on the keyboard now.

But doesn't anybody else ever wonder why there aren't more LINPACK benchmarks posted on alt.sex.stories?