Interpreting IBM POWER8: Fully open for large data design

"Tenkine Server Channel" a mention of clouds and large data, we will invariably talk about "open" topic, and talk about open, many people first thought of the X86 architecture. This is because, X86 in just a few years time, the development of extremely rapid, the advantages of self-evident-open ecosystems, lower costs, better ease of use ... Performance is also constantly chasing minicomputer, IBM hardware Department in 2013, as the representative of the UNIX faction power system has been under unprecedented pressure.

In the face of an army of Intel Camp armies, arm of striking, IBM in the brewing 3 years later in 2013, the release of the POWER8 processor, expand the Linux market, claiming that it is a server for cloud computing. It can be said that the power processor is the core of all IBM hardware products, is IBM's server and supercomputer's main processor, for the blue giant is significant, the latest POWER8 for large data has been optimized, April 28, IBM for domestic users to officially release the POWER8 chip, and the introduction of a new generation of POWER8 based power BAE server.

IBM Power Full-generation system platform release

Review Power's evolutionary history

Before we get to know POWER8, let's review the evolution of the IBM Power Architecture: Basically a new generation every two years, with the exception of the transitional edition power7+ released in 2012. Regardless of architecture, process, core quantity, multithreading capabilities, cache capacity, memory bandwidth, peak I/O, and so on, each upgrade will have great progress. The POWER8 processor has 12 core designs, 96 threads, 22nm process manufacturing, and supports the PCI 3.0 interface specification.

IBM Power Evolution Roadmap (from the Internet)

The first IBM computer to use the power architecture was called "RISC system/6000" or rs/6000 in February 1990. rs/6000 is divided into workstation and server two levels, respectively called PowerStation and Powerserver. The rs/6000 CPU has two configurations, called RIOS-1 and rios.9 (more often known as the "Power" CPU). RIOS-1 has 11 chips. Single Chip Rios, RSC, is for the lower level of rs/6000 developed. The first machine to use RSC was launched in 1992.

IBM released the POWER4 in 2001, introducing the first Giga Series processor. It is a fully 64-bit processor that implements a 64-bit instruction set and also has a as/400 extension, which is used on rs/6000 and as/400 systems to replace POWER3 and RS64 processors.

Take POWER8 and POWER4 for a comparison, its core number of 6 times times, multi-threaded capacity 4 times times, on-chip cache 50 times, out of the cache 3.5 times, memory bandwidth 15 times times, peak I/O 16 times times.

On the day of release, IBM's official industry benchmark data showed that the IBM power system analysis speed can be 50 times times faster than the latest x86 system, through some customer-measured results show that the analysis of query speed increased by more than 1000 times times, running time from a few hours down to a few seconds.

High-end server down the altar

Unlike X86 's flagship low-end market, the power series has been a high-end line, the opening of IBM claims to be high-end server technology for the first time in decades to truly transformative progress, and POWER8 the biggest bright spot is not the performance of the promotion, nor the price advantage, but "open". Since last year, the sound of IBM's open power has been streaming out, and IBM has been exerting its power: in 2013, the Power System Linux Center was set up in Beijing to expand the Linux market; then the PowerLinux plan was launched to build its biosphere; Invested 1 billion of dollars, Used to encourage the development of Linux applications on power, allowing developers to move from the X86 platform to power, both hard and soft.

August 2013 OpenPOWER Alliance was established, the initial five members of IBM OpenPOWER Alliance, including IBM, Google, Mellanox, nvidia (NVIDIA), Tyan (Taian computer), Suzhou Sheng Acer Information Technology Co., Ltd., Jiangsu Industrial Technology International Research Institute, Samsung Electronics joined the OpenPOWER Foundation. As of now, the OpenPOWER Foundation has 25 technology vendors in the world, the launch of the POWER8 system is the first OpenPOWER compatible system. Through the OpenPOWER Foundation, IBM has opened up power-related technology with decades of technology accumulation to the industry and published detailed technical specifications for POWER8 processors.

Power8

At release 28th, IBM also said it would launch a series of initiatives for partners in China to drive POWER8 and applications. Including the recently announced capital injection of China Sheng Tiancheng subsidiary Beijing New Cloud Systems Technology Co., Ltd. Build an enterprise-class application store based on the development and sales of hardware and software products related to Linux on power.

Power ambitions

With POWER8 's release and open source strategy, IBM is expanding its market in two areas: on the one hand, IBM POWER8 's openness helps power chips break into today's largest server customer base, internet companies, and large data centers for public cloud companies. Depth optimization Power+aix has been considered by the industry is the best combination of high RAS characteristics, in finance, telecommunications, government and other industries in the key applications of a wide range of comparisons between Power+aix,power and Linux on the one hand is inherited power of the original high reliability, high-performance , combined with Linux open source, can effectively save costs.

　　
OpenPOWER mode

On the other hand, as an important emerging market for IBM-China, after the Snowden incident, the "go to IoE" sound, the state has increased the investment of proprietary intellectual property chips and software, IBM's business development in China has suffered a great obstacle and challenges. After opening, IBM said that IBM's power technology supported more thorough localization than its rivals. Through the OpenPOWER Foundation's open source software and hardware architecture, Chinese companies can develop and produce a "safe, autonomous, controllable" hardware and software system based on OpenPOWER.

IBM's Greater China Chanda stressed that IBM's power would be more controllable and secure through open source and openness, saying that IBM would not, now and in the future, give customers information to third parties, including the U.S. government, and that there was absolutely no backdoor to information security.

Challenges ahead

Even if IBM were to hit the big money to build the power ecosystem, and even if the power was open, IBM had shown the greatest sincerity, and there were still a lot of people who were skeptical about the prospect of an open power system, thinking that IBM POWER8, while having high performance, But the number of users on the basis of X86 and even later arm. Whether the success of open source can be replicated in the high-end server market is hard to say, after all, the market is controlled only by a handful of companies.

From another point of view, it is hard to say that opening the power will make the user move from the current X86 platform. Most Chinese Internet companies currently use architectures based on X86, which can be a big hurdle. In contrast to IBM's expectations, POWER8 customers are likely to be mostly from upgrades of POWER7 users.