The IBM pSeries 630 represents the first appearance of the POWER4 processor in a one- to four-way server. It is also the first rack-mounted POWER4 server, as it comes in both deskside tower and 19-inch rack configurations. To create the system, IBM developed a ceramic module that houses a single chip with either one or two POWER4 processors on board. A p630 can contain up to two of these modules, each housed in its own "book" that slides into the server chassis. By contrast, the high-end p690 and i890 servers use a more expensive glass module that houses up to four chips and eight processors. There's also a difference in clock speeds; while the high-end systems can stretch to 1.3GHz, the p630 can only hit 1.0GHz. In essence, IBM is taking chips that can't test out at 1.3GHz and putting them in the p630.
Beyond these differences, the p630 shares virtually all of the features of its big brothers, especially in the reliability and availability areas. These include hot swappable fans, power supplies, disk drives, and PCI cards, not to mention features such as First Failure Data Capture and memory soft scrubbing that help detect and prevent errors. Users can also split the p630 into as many as four logical partitions (LPARs) running AIX, with a minimum of one CPU per LPAR. These LPARs are static, which means that administrators cannot change them without reloading the system. In the fourth quarter, however, IBM will ship capabilities in AIX 5.2 that let customers dynamically reconfigure LPARs without a reboot. This feature will initially fall short of what the iSeries offers, as each LPAR will still require at least one CPU and will be incrementable only in single-CPU chunks of capacity. However, fractional CPU partitioning should ship on AIX 5.3 in late 2003 or early 2004.
IBM also anticipates that, by the end of the third quarter, the p630 will also run the first 64-bit Linux distributions that are POWER4-compatible. The first of these distributions will undoubtedly come from SuSE, whose Linux Enterprise Server already supports the POWER3 processor on both the iSeries and pSeries. Besides running on the p630, p670, and p690, any POWER4 distribution should also run natively on the i890.
With its fairly aggressive price/performance, the p630 demonstrates that IBM wants to beat up the competition in the entry-level UNIX market, a niche that Sun has long dominated. The base price for a one-way p630 is $12,495, and you can get into a four-way model for just over $50,000. By comparison, Sun's latest four-way server, the "Cherrystone" V480 that it announced two weeks ago, costs about $3,500 less in its four-way incarnation. However, the V480's UltraSPARC III processors have been no match for the POWER4 in most benchmarks. For instance, Sun's 8-way V880 (which uses the same UltraSPARC III chips running at the same clock speed as the V480) can only turn in a SPECint2000 rating of 507 per CPU, while the p630 turns in a blazing 630. When it comes to Web-serving performance, the p630 has also logged a SPECweb99_SSL rating of 1,050 compared to the V480's paltry 568. In short, the p630 will probably outperform comparable Sun servers by a significant margin in most application environments.
What makes the p630 interesting for iSeries customers is the fact that it will eventually make its way to the entry level of their server family. When recast as an iSeries, the p630 will probably outperform the i270 and i820 by about 40 to 50% on a per-CPU basis and will likely cost less. At this moment, the least you can spend for a Model 270 (according to IBM's Web site) is $18,662 for a one-way 270-2248 with no L2 cache and 512MB of memory. For a server that doesn't have the horsepower to run WebSphere, that's expensive. By contrast, a one-way p630 with 1GB of memory, a built-in L2 cache, and an L3 cache costs $12,495. Add a couple of thousand dollars for the inevitable memory and DASD "premium" IBM charges for comparable iSeries models, and you have a server that could run WebSphere in an LPAR for around $15,000. That's a big improvement.
When can the iSeries community expect such a dream machine? While IBM is being tight-lipped about its plans right now, my best guess is early 2003. When the first p630 servers roll out the warehouse doors on August 30 of this year, IBM will likely be greeted with a flood of orders that will soak up most of the demand for POWER4 chips through the end of 2002. Of course, IBM might be persuaded to move up the iSeries rollout if enough customers clamor for it. Let me know if this is something for which you would make room in your 2002 IT budgets, and I'll pass your request to my sources in IBM.
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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