Edit: POWER7 blades. SDMC. Those are names I have not heard in a long time.
Originally posted April 12, 2011 on AIXchange
IBM is conducting what it calls a “product preview” today. The subject of this preview is new hardware that is expected to be rolled out later this year.
I received this information during a recent conference call with IBM.
First, there will be a new POWER7 high-performance computing machine, the Model 775. As you’d expect, this machine is based on POWER7 processors, which come with eight cores per socket running at 3.8 GHz. The 775 will be packaged with a Quad Core Module (QCM). A QCM consists of four POWER7 chips; thus, each QCM will have 32 cores.
IBM will then take the QCMs and integrate them into what they call a drawer, or a node. A 2U drawer will have eight QCMs, giving us 256 (8×32) total cores in an efficient, densely packed 2U form factor. You’ll be able to have 2TB of memory per node, and IBM estimates peak performance of 7.8 teraflops in a 2U package.
The machine will have a high-speed interconnect fabric, which allows these 2U nodes to be connected using an optical interconnect. This will provide the capability to connect to a total of four drawers (IBM calls this a supernode) consisting of 1,024 cores. Twelve nodes will fit in a rack, with a maximum of 24 TB per rack and a peak performance of 95 teraflops in the rack. Optical interconnects allow for connecting supernodes together — as of now customers could have as many as 512 supernodes (or 524,000 cores) running at an estimated 15 petaflops at peak performance.
The 775 will be a quiet machine, because it will have fewer fans. It will be water-cooled with 100 percent heat capture. The 775 is expected to be used for climate and weather modeling and prediction, life sciences, nuclear resource management, and financial services.
Here are some other things that grabbed my attention:
* The 795 is expected to have new capabilities that allow for hot node add, hot memory upgrades and repair. You’ll also see concurrent GX adapter add and hot GX adapter repair, along with concurrent system controller repair. The maximum number of partitions that can be created on a frame will increase to 1,000 on the 795, 640 on the 770 and 780, and 320 on the 750. Relatedly, when active energy manager is used with these machines, administrators will be able to set up energy policy definitions by partition rather than by system, so different policies can enable energy savings while maintaining performance.
* New blades are planned. There will be a new single-wide Model 703 blade with a maximum of 16 cores running at 2.4Ghz and 128 GB of memory. There will also be double-wide Model 704 blades, which consist of 32 cores running at 2.4GHz and a maximum of 256 GB of memory. The 703 is expected to have one hard disk bay, and you can choose either an HDD or an SSD. The 704 will have two disk drive bays, so you can have either two HDDs or four SSDs. The blades would provide the capability to run both traditional rotating hard drives and SSD drives. These new blades are expected to run in BladeCenter H, HT or S chassis.
* The Model 750 will be refreshed with new processor options, including 4-core 3.7 GHz, 6-core 3.7 GHz and 8-core 3.2 and 3.6 GHz options. The 750 will still have four sockets and 512 GB of memory per machine.
* Support for dual VIO servers across all of the POWER7 blades will be enabled through the new Systems Director Management Console (SDMC). SDMC will be used to enable active memory expansion on the blades. There will also be support for running live partition mobility operations between blades and rack servers, which will open up a whole new way to manage workloads. The SDMC will run on familiar CR6 hardware, although with beefier disk and memory requirements.
The SDMC enhancements mean we’ll no longer need to run IVM to manage our blades, and since we’ll be able to run dual VIO servers, this will make blade offerings a much more attractive option to many customers. In addition, because IBM is making the SDMC the next-generation management console for Power systems, the HMC will be phased out over the next several years. (Although the HMC and IVM are expected to be kept current with new Power systems models into 2013, they will not incorporate future advanced management capabilities.) During the transition period, customers will be able to run the SDMC side by side with existing HMCs until they’re ready to switch permanently.
On the call it was stressed that the SDMC is meant to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. In other words, IBM says it will give customers ample time to make this transition. And really, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. For awhile now, I’ve been hearing that “the HMC is going away” at conferences and workshops I’ve attended.
The SDMC will manage POWER6 and POWER7 servers, and there will be a virtual appliance version for small-tier systems. The SDMC will utilize the Systems Director user interface. It will support a superset of HMC capabilities, integrate platform and OS management, and maintain compatibility for CLI and scripting support.
I’ll write more about this in the near future, but rest assured this solution will make it much easier to manage an entire computing environment — including servers and blades — from a central location. In addition, read IBM Systems Magazine for more details about the SDMC (a cover story is planned for the May 2011 issue). And an IBM Redbook on the SDMC is expected to be ready later this month.
* Another interesting option that I saw was an SAS disk-only I/O drawer (the EXP24S) that could house up to 24 SFF drives in a 2U form factor. This I/O drawer would allow you to partition the drawer into four different sets of disks, thus making it easier to present a smaller group of disks in the drawer to different partitions. This could be a nice option if you’re not using a SAN but still need access to more external storage.
* Finally, IBM highlighted a change to the Power systems landing page on its website. Look for this URL: www.ibm.com/power.
So what do you think of these planned solutions? I expect there to be plenty of discussion around the HMC and SDMC as we learn more in the coming months. Please leave your thoughts in Comments.