Wednesday, 26 July 2006

IBM Upgrades System p5 Server

IBM has announced that it is upgrading its System p5 servers with dual-core Power5+ processors. The two models are IBM's p5-595, which can scale up to 32 processors with 64 cores, and the p5-590, which has 32 cores.

"The new system is the first to combine immense power and linear scaling with the ability to create virtualized environments that map business functions with IT assets," said Ross Mauri, General Manager, IBM System p.

The new IBM System p5 595 is designed to help companies improve IT operational efficiency while cutting overall infrastructure costs.

The bigger of the two IBM servers, the 64-core p5-595 running a single instance of the IBM DB2 9 data server on the AIX 5L operating system and using IBM System Storage DS4800, processed 4,016,222 transactions per minute on the TPC-C benchmark - 3.2 times better than the HP Integrity Superdome, IBM said.

The company claims the p5-595 offered 38% better price performance than the HP machine – USD 2.98 per transaction versus USD 4.82 per transaction. (1) The TPC-C benchmark is an industry standard for measuring the ability of a system to process complex online transactions and large volumes of business data.

IBM is also making available its Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager on these systems. The recently introduced metering tool allows users to track usage by a business unit, for instance, to better allocate costs.