Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IBM To Update Unix Servers

Posted by Hemos on from the power-the-machine dept.

An anonymous reader writes "IBM is about to announce a major update its pSeries Unix servers, according to a story on IT Week's site. The story quotes an IBM source, who said the new servers will use IBM's Power5+ chip."

22 comments

  1. IBM Out in Front Further? by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I don't work with Unix servers, but I've always heard that entry servers using the Power4 processors were the best. From The Unix Guardian:
    As I said when I went over the high-end and the entry Unix server markets earlier this year, without any doubt, IBM has been an increasingly dominant factor in the Unix server business, across all form factors and SMP scalability, since the Power4 processors debuted four years ago. IBM is, in fact, arguably the main reason that the Unix server business has seen any growth at all.
    Now, as the table with that article shows, the 2005 pSeries kills the competition in their workload tests. I'm curious though about other server solutions (large or small scale) that Slashdot users may work with or know about. What about Unisys or Hewlett Packard scalable multiprocessor (SMP) solutions? Has anyone used Unix on these? Is it not recommended because of the chipsets or the way the processors are built?
    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:IBM Out in Front Further? by tweek · · Score: 2, Informative

      Having worked with Power5 systems since they came out, I can attest to the system. The last part that IBM has missing, which I was informed they were working on, is hot-swap cpu. I know Sun has had this for a while.

      IBM has positioned themselves very well by making sure that linux runs on both the pSeries hardware AND the zSeries in addition to the xSeries (Intel line). There is an offical support policy for linux on Power.

      I know Sun just added that to the Sparc line but I'm not sure where HP stands. Is Linux a supported config on the Superdome line?

      The only other company really left is SGI and we all know how that's going.

      --
      "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
    2. Re:IBM Out in Front Further? by twiddlingbits · · Score: 1

      SUN X86 systems (AMD chips) Offically support Linux (RHEL, SUSE) and Solaris, AND Windows. The new SPARC IV+ chips are a bit slower than the Power5+ but not much. With Solaris 10 they come out about even versus P5+ and AIX as Solaris 10 has some very good optimizations. The new T1 CMT processor is something no one else has. Also, with Sun you get very very good hardware without having to open your doors to IBM Global Services who will hound you for all sorts of business for the rest of your life. IBM gets 60 something percent of its revenue from Services.

    3. Re:IBM Out in Front Further? by swordgeek · · Score: 1

      I'm curious about the SparcIV+ benchmarks. IBM claims that Sun only does well when comparing a (dual-core) IV+ against a single core Power5 (or 5+). Any thoughts on this?

      --

      "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
    4. Re:IBM Out in Front Further? by tweek · · Score: 1

      The devil is in the details right? Have you ever seen what qualifies as a TPC benchmark. If I'm not mistaken, the tests are all selects at which point and enough memory and your database has everything cached in bufferpools.

      As to the specifics of the T1 and P5, I think I'll do some digging. In the end you're comparing more than just the machine. The OS comes into play as well. I think a fairer benchmark would be Linux on Power and Linux on Sparc running a non-vendor specific package. For instance in the DB2 tests, IBM doesn't yet support DB2 on Solaris 10 so it's almost a non-starter.

      --
      "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
    5. Re:IBM Out in Front Further? by markc · · Score: 1

      Excellent point! Depends on what the meaning of the word "core" is, to paraphrase a former president.

      IBM's Power4 came out years ago as "dual core" on the same chip. Little fan fare. The cores share L3 cache (now they're all doing that too), but little else, and you really got 2X+ performance from their multi-core implementation.

      I believe Sun implemented (questionable word here) dual core in enough of a different way so that you really get less than 2X performance over a comparable speed single core chip. I do know that BEA charges us about 1.7X price on a socket-to-socket comparison, so that says a little about what they think the relative performance is. But I digress.

      Our Sun rep was kind enough to point out a recent TPC-H metric that had Sun beating IBM in raw performance by 5%, but I don't think he caught the details in the footnotes, which I tend to gravitate to.

      To summarize my observation:

      After raw performance, if you take cost into account (and who doesn't?), IBM is the less expensive option. And that 5% raw performance increase comes at the expense of 12.5% more CPUs (72 vs. 64). And if we're counting "cores", then IBM's is still 64-way, but Sun's jumps to 144... so if you have other s/w that's licensed by core that you want to run on that same box, well, do the math.

    6. Re:IBM Out in Front Further? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      The last part that IBM has missing, which I was informed they were working on, is hot-swap cpu. I know Sun has had this for a while.
      Add in to that hot-swap memory. And upgrading firmware without a complete outage on the frame.

      We have p690s and 15K/25Ks where I work. We have had numerous outages (mainly planned, but a few unplanned) on the p690s & p615s, but we have never had to take a complete 15K frame outage. Sure, we reboot domains & the system controllers, but about the only thing that you have to take the frame down for is a backplane replacement and that's not a common occurance.

    7. Re:IBM Out in Front Further? by stevesliva · · Score: 1
      From http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6034085.html
      McNealy said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison recently gave Sun a big shot in the arm by lowering the license fee that the database company charges for Sun servers.

      "I sat down with Larry and said, 'Larry, you're killing us,'" McNealy said. "Part of the problem is we didn't have the fastest microprocessors, so you had to throw a lot of microprocessors at it. When you charge $30,000 per core, we ended up looking very expensive."

      --
      Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
    8. Re:IBM Out in Front Further? by twiddlingbits · · Score: 1

      Sun US IV+ CPUs are multi-core so you get about 1.7-2.0X (depending) on the application,BEA is correct. You still only have X/2 CPUs. Take the T1 for instance, it's only 8 cores but each core can run 4 threads, it's only 8 CPUs or is it 32? Also the Power5+ chip isn't available except in selected IBM servers (high end), the US IV+ is available from the low side of the mid-range(V440) up to the massive E25K. IBM's Power Series is multi-core as well,but IBM won't call them "cores" they call it "symetric multiprocessing" or "simultaneous multithreading" but apples to apple an IBM 64 CPU machine is really 128 cores/threads just like a Sun would be. You also forgot to say Oracle has changed the licenses so that chips with multiple cores/threads are not penalized, and also for a while now Oracle is FREE on Sun USIV+ platforms, you only pay maintenance. IBM Marketing does a great job of spreading FUD. They don't tell you things like this about thier Blades.. did you know you can only run them about 1/2 full due to the undersized power supply, and the lack of fans to handle the huge heat the Xeons put out. You also have to realize IBM can undersell ANYONE if they think it gets the camels nose (IBM GS) under the tent. IBM GS makes a LOT of money, I know I used to work for them and was billed at $325/hr. **********disclaimer...I now work for Sun, but this is my own view**********

  2. Yeah, and...? by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Systems, like ESL students, get upgrades from time to time.

    Why even have a story if you aren't going to explain the importance of the change?

  3. IBM Page Already Updated? by Bad+to+the+Ben · · Score: 2, Interesting
    IBM Page on p5 Systems. Seems that the page is already up with the new info. Note the stats regarding the Power 5 chips:
    POWER5 systems running Linux have beaten the best-of-breed performers in SPECweb99 by 27%, SPECsfs by 158%, and NetBench® by 55% proving the power of Linux on POWER systems. Best of all, a 4-way System p5 550 running DB2® has established leadership TPC-C benchmarks versus other Linux platforms.

    I'd like more info about the "best of the breed" part. If you click on the Performance heading on the above page you can find a PDF to read about the tests, but as in a lot of these cases it's pretty cryptic. I'd love to see a comparison between the newest Opterons and Power 5.

    It's nice to have a solid competitor to x86 though, especially seems how SPARC seems to be losing momentum with Sun using AMD in it's new X series.
    1. Re:IBM Page Already Updated? by tweek · · Score: 1

      I'm a little miffed at IBM r.e. opterons. I've been trying to buy opterons from them for a while but they only have one server model that uses Opterons.

      When your datacenter says they won't let you buy any space because of cooling issues, Opterons start looking a little better.

      --
      "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
    2. Re:IBM Page Already Updated? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HP have some VERY nice opteron based offerings. Try them out.

    3. Re:IBM Page Already Updated? by twiddlingbits · · Score: 2, Informative

      Give Sun a call. Last time I looked they had like 5 systems using Opeterons, single core, dual core and single/dual CPU. Very good prices as well.

    4. Re:IBM Page Already Updated? by swordgeek · · Score: 1

      Call Sun. They're pushing some extremely nice Opteron-based kit right now. Also, if cooling/power issues are a primary concern, the new T1000/T2000 servers may astonish you. (Note, however, that these chips are very workload-dependent; If you're doing heavy FP work, then this is NOT the system for you. Conversely, if you're serving up web pages, this might make people gasp at the performance/BTU)

      HP is apparently selling nice Opterons, but they have very clearly stated that they'll never support HP-UX on them, so why bother?

      --

      "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
    5. Re:IBM Page Already Updated? by tweek · · Score: 1

      We're kind of in a stick right now. We're just now coming out of the phase where we wanted to buy only IBM for a while. The biggest reason was a new project with high visibility. We wanted no questions of support so we bought IBM boxen, IBM branded FC switches and hosted it in an IBM datacenter running IBM Websphere Application Server.

      Now that we're moving to Tomcat, the IBM issue is not as important. Of course now they want to run all the appservers on redundant VMware servers connected to our IBM SAN so we'll probably stick with x360 models or somesuch.

      --
      "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
    6. Re:IBM Page Already Updated? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sitting at a pSeries p570 right now and let me tell you, the speed and power of these types of servers is purely amazing. This is an 2TB Oracle 9.2.0.5 database with 5100 users with less than 2ms response time and the system is about 80% idle.

      If you look at the top500 site, 3 of the top 5 servers are IBM Power5 series servers. The Power5 chip is the big brother to the PPC970 that was in the Apple G5.

      Unless you have about US$10,000 you can't even get an entry system tho.

    7. Re:IBM Page Already Updated? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IBM invested a lot of money and effort in a custom chipset for Xeon-- the "X3 Architecture," which staples some nice big caches (L3s, perhaps?) between the Xeons in the 4-way and 8-way servers. So for the big iron xSeries servers, the Opterons basically aren't compatible with IBM's boards. They have released blade servers with the Opteron, they just can't snap them into the xSeries architecture they have right now.

    8. Re:IBM Page Already Updated? by larien · · Score: 1
      Hrm, you might want to look at Solaris 10 zones rather than VMware; might end up cheaper as you won't need the extra software. Added to that, you lose the issues regarding cross-vendor support that can arise. The T1000s are also good for cramming lots of threads in a small footprint.

      Caveat Emptor: I've never used VMWare servers, so I don't know how good or bad they are. I've only used zones in the Solaris 10 course I did, so don't have a lot of real-world experience of them so far. Both solutions will probably fill your needs, just one might be better/cheaper.

  4. Re:"the new servers will use IBM's Power5+ chip" by Bazzalisk · · Score: 1

    Apparantly not.

    --
    James P. Barrett
  5. Systems Designer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I work as a system designer leveraging HP-PA-RISC, IBM, Sun, and HP-win32/64 servers. I primarily work in the UNIX space, but occassionally have to purchase Windows servers. Enough background.
    Prior to the UltraSPARC 4+ and the T1 processor from Sun, the Power5 core was approximately equiv to 4 UltraSPARC4 CPUs. For example, a P550 http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/hardware/entry/550 q/index.html with 4 cores, is roughly equiv to a V1280 with 10 CPUs. When you add up the total cost of ownership, most software packages are licensed either by core or CPU count. 4 CPU licenses are always always less costly than 10 CPU licenses.
    Now the Power5+ processors (which I've already purchased almost 30 servers), feel 2x faster than a Power4. The P550Q Sun's T1000/T2000 application servers are also very impressive, but they aren't general purpose and the workload needs to match what these servers are designed to handle or you will be disapointed. OTOH, a $8k list price with appsrv performance like a $50k box is impressive (assuming that is a true number). I haven't gotten any T1-based servers http://store.sun.com/CMTemplate/CEServlet?process= SunStore&cmdViewProduct_CP&catid=141649 yet.
    These servers are too new for many benchmarks outside what each vender claims. I've found IBM and Sun to be truthful in their performance for nearly available systems. They have to be since it is too easy to see where they might have lied in just a few months by checking http://www.spec.org/