On March 31, IBM mounted the podium at a New York hotel to announce that it is creating what it calls a "community of innovation" around its Power processor architecture. The company also demonstrated workstations, servers, and devices that run on Power chips, including a POWER5 server with OS/400, AIX, and Linux partitions.
IBM hosted the event, which it dubbed "Power Everywhere," to announce that it will help other vendors to build chips based on the Power Architecture. To jump-start the effort, IBM is...
- Licensing Power technologies to more vendors, including Sony, Cisco, and companies that develop application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs)
- Opening Power Architecture Centers, where vendors can collaborate with IBM on Power processor designs
- Developing an open governance model that will allow the vendor community to decide on future enhancements to the Power Architecture
- Launching a Web site where interested vendors can learn about the Power Architecture, join the Power community, and download Power processor design tools
To put it simply, IBM is taking elements of the open-source development model that made Linux an explosive success and is applying them to the Power Architecture. It will offer the core technologies of the architecture to license holders in much the same way that the keepers of Linux offer the operating system's kernel to developers. IBM will also foster an environment of collaboration around Power to get chips based on the architecture into as many electronic devices, workstations, and servers as possible.
While the Power Everywhere initiative will not have an immediate impact on owners of IBM's iSeries and pSeries servers, it will likely benefit them over the long term. If Power's core instruction set finds its way into more computing devices, it will attract more software developers. That, in turn, will give IBM greater influence over the software industry and bring more applications to Big Blue's POWER servers. If that happens, it could put a dent in the sales of competitive enterprise servers from Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. It could also limit Intel's ability to gain widespread acceptance for its 64-bit Itanium processor as an enterprise server platform. In other words, Power Everywhere could prevent rivals to the iSeries and pSeries from achieving a similar ubiquity.
A Little POWER5 Preview
Speaking of the iSeries, IBM used the event to offer the first public demonstration of a POWER5 iSeries prototype. The server was a rack-mounted design that contained two dual-core POWER5 processors running on separate cards. With a little sleuthing, I managed to find out that the processors were running at 1.5 GHz. It is likely that the first production models will run at speeds that are much closer to 2.0 GHz.
The server was configured to show how IBM's new hypervisor--now dubbed the Virtualization Engine--can dynamically manage logical partitions (LPARs) running OS/400, AIX, and Linux. To do that, IBM set up the server with three LPARs running their respective operating systems. While the technician who was demonstrating the server was not at liberty to say so, it was clear that the server was running OS/400 V5R3, the next release of OS/400, which IBM will likely announce in early May.
What was most interesting about the demonstration was the way in which the hypervisor could dynamically resize the LPARs in response to increased workloads. To show this, IBM ran an iterative program on each of the LPARs that occasionally increased its demands on one of the partitions. As the partition approached 100% utilization, the hypervisor took unused capacity from the server and automatically added it to the stressed LPAR.
As those of you who use LPARs know, it is currently possible to manually reallocate capacity to LPARs or to specify times when the iSeries will reallocate capacity. However, it is not possible to have the system detect an overutilized LPAR and reallocate capacity on its own. That, according to my IBM sources, is precisely what the POWER5 servers (both iSeries and pSeries) will do. Users will be able to designate LPARs as belonging to a resource pool. If an LPAR in the pool cannot meet the performance criteria of the workload it is running, the hypervisor will allocate resources to it from the pool, based on management priorities. This feature will significantly reduce the management overhead needed to deliver higher quality of service levels.
There is much more that I could write about the POWER5 server rollout, so look for me to offer further insights in a future article. For now, suffice it to say that the rollout appears to be going smoothly, especially considering the number of new capabilities that IBM is packing into the servers. I'll be asking around to find out if this is actually the case, so stay tuned.
Lee Kroon is a Senior Industry Analyst for Andrews Consulting Group, a firm that helps mid-sized companies manage business transformation through technology. You can reach him at
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