Ron Gordon
Director – Power Systems
On September 8, IBM announced a rookery (look it up!) of awesome new Linux POWER8 based servers. While the names of the new systems appear to be similar to the older versions, these are much more flexible in configurations, have incredible price performance, and offer broader choices, depending on solution being implemented. While I really don’t like to talk about prices, let me say that these new systems are over 40% lower priced than current x86 based systems that run Linux. But, I will talk about function.
Want a high performance 2U system, with 20 cores of 3.3 GHz POWER8 and GPUs, and 1 TB of RAM? The new S822LC for HPC offers an industry-first design where the NVIDIA GPUs (4 of them!) are linked directly to the processor, via the NVLink protocol, to enable transfer of data at 80 GB/s. Compared to the normal 16 GB/s on a PCIe bus, this will create tremendous performance points never seen before.
Want a similar system for big data workloads? The S822LC for Big Data is also 20 cores of 3.3 GHz POWER8, but this model has 12 internal disk bays, for a total of almost 100 TB in a single 2U chassis. If you wish to complement the system with GPUs or FPGAs, they can be added via the PCIe Gen3 slots.
Awesome!!
But, let’s say you need a super dense cluster. To support that, the new S821LC system has 20 cores of 2.93 GHz POWER8, 512 GB of RAM, 4 drives (32 TB), 4 PCIe slots, and the ability to add GPUs or FPGAs. All this is a 1U chassis. So, in a 42U rack, you can have 840 cores and 1,344 TB of storage!
These systems are IBM manufactured and a product of the OpenPower consortium. They all come with a 3-year warranty.
Now…about that rookery…
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