The IBM System p is a high-end line of

RISC In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...

( Power)/

UNIX Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

-based servers. It was the successor of the RS/6000 line, and predecessor of the

IBM Power Systems IBM Power Systems is a family of server computers from IBM that are based on its Power processors. It was created in 2008 as a merger of the System p and System i product lines. History IBM had two distinct POWER- and PowerPC-based hardwa ...

server series.

History

The previous RS/6000 line was originally a line of workstations and servers. The first System p server line was named the ''e''Server pSeries in 2000 as part of the e-Server branding initiative. In 2004, with the advent of the

POWER5 The POWER5 is a microprocessor developed and fabricated by IBM. It is an improved version of the POWER4. The principal improvements are support for simultaneous multithreading (SMT) and an on-die memory controller. The POWER5 is a dual-core ...

processor, the server family was rebranded the ''e''Server p5. In 2005, following IBM's move to streamline its server and storage brands worldwide, and incorporating the "System" brand with the Systems Agenda, the family was again renamed to System p5. The System p5 now encompassed the IBM OpenPower product line. In 2007, after the introduction of the

POWER6 The POWER6 is a microprocessor developed by IBM that implemented the Power ISA#Power ISA v.2.05, Power ISA v.2.05. When it became available in systems in 2007, it succeeded the POWER5#POWER5+, POWER5+ as IBM's flagship Power microprocessor. It i ...

processor models, the last rename under the System p brand dropped the p (numbered) designation. In April 2008, IBM announced a rebranding of the System p and its unification with the mid-range System i platform. The resulting product line was called

Hardware and software

Processors

Whereas the previous RS/6000 line used a mix of early POWER and

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

processors, when pSeries came along, this had evolved into RS64-III and POWER3 across the board—POWER3 for its excellent floating-point performance and RS64 for its scalability, throughput, and integer performance. IBM developed the

POWER4 The POWER4 is a microprocessor developed by IBM, International Business Machines (IBM) that implemented the 64-bit PowerPC and PowerPC AS instruction set architectures. Released in 2001, the POWER4 succeeded the POWER3 and RS64 microprocessors, e ...

processor to replace both POWER3 and the RS64 line in 2001. After that, the differences between throughput and number crunching-optimized systems no longer existed. Since then, System p machines evolved to use the

but also the

PowerPC 970 The PowerPC 970, PowerPC 970FX, and PowerPC 970MP are 64-bit PowerPC CPUs from IBM introduced in 2002. Apple branded the 970 as PowerPC G5 for its Power Mac G5. Having created the PowerPC architecture in the early 1990s via the AIM alliance, t ...

for the low-end and blade systems. The last System p systems used the

processor, such as the POWER6-based System p 570 and the JS22 blade. In addition, during the SuperComputing 2007 (SC07) conference in Reno, IBM introduced a new POWER6-based System p 575 with 32 POWER6 cores at 4.7 GHz and up to 256 GB of RAM with water cooling.

Features

All IBM System p5 and IBM ''e''Server p5 machines support DLPAR (Dynamic Logical Partitioning) with Virtual I/O and Micro-partitioning. System p generally uses the AIX operating system and, more recently,

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

versions of the

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

operating system.

Models

BladeCenter

* IBM BladeCenter JS12 (POWER6) * IBM BladeCenter JS22 (POWER6) * IBM BladeCenter JS23 (POWER6) * IBM BladeCenter JS43 (POWER6)

Main line

eServer pSeries

* IBM eServer pSeries 610 (7028-6C1 & 6E1) * IBM eServer pSeries 615 (7029-6C3, 7029-6E3) (1~2-core POWER4+ CPU) * IBM eServer pSeries 620 (7025-F80, 6F0 & 6F1) (1~3 2-core RS64-IV CPUs) * IBM eServer pSeries 630 (7028-6C4, 7028-6E4) (1 1-core POWER4 CPU or 1~2 2-core POWER4 CPUs) * IBM eServer pSeries 640 (7026-B80) 1-4 POWER3-II CPUs * IBM eServer pSeries 650 (7038-6M2) 2-8 POWER4 CPUs * IBM eServer pSeries 655 (7039-651) 4-8 POWER4 CPUs * IBM eServer pSeries 660 (7026-H80, 6H0, 6H1, M80 & 6M1) * IBM eServer pSeries 670 (7040-671) 4-16 POWER4 CPUs * IBM eServer pSeries 680 (7017 range) * IBM eServer pSeries 690 (7040-681) 8-32 POWER4 CPUs The

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

p690 was, at the time of its release in late 2001, the flagship of IBM's high-end

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

servers during the

era of processors. It was built to run IBM AIX Unix, although it is possible to run a version of

minus some POWER4-specific features. It could support up to 32 (1.5, 1.7 or 1.9 GHz) POWER4+ processors and 1 TB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

, which weighs well over 1000 kg. It was used in a

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

at Forschungszentrum Jülich in 2004, and was discontinued in late 2005.

eServer p5

Released in 2004. * IBM eServer p5 510 Express (9111-510) (1~2-core 1.5 GHz POWER5 CPU) * IBM eServer p5 510 (9111-510) (1~2-core 1.65 GHz POWER5 CPU) * IBM eServer p5 520 Express (9111-520) (1~2-core 1.5 GHz POWER5 CPU) * IBM eServer p5 520 (9111-520) (2-core 1.65 GHz POWER5 CPU) * IBM eServer p5 550 Express (9113-550) (1~2 1~2-core 1.5 GHz POWER5 CPUs) * IBM eServer p5 550 (9113-550) (1~2 2-core 1.65 GHz POWER5 CPUs) * IBM eServer p5 570 Express (9117-570) (1~8 2-core 1.5 GHz POWER5 CPUs) * IBM eServer p5 570 (9117-570) (1~8 2-core 1.65 GHz or 1.9 GHz POWER5 CPUs) * IBM eServer p5 590 (9119-590) (1~4 8-core 1.65 GHz POWER5 MCMs) * IBM eServer p5 595 (9119-595) (2, 4, 6 or 8 8-core 1.65 GHz or 1.9 GHz POWER5 MCMs)

System p5

* IBM System p5 185 (7037-A50) (1~2-core PowerPC 970 CPU) * IBM System p5 505 (9115-505) (1~2-core POWER5 or POWER5+ CPU) * IBM System p5 505Q (9115-505) (4-core POWER5+ CPU) * IBM System p5 510 (9110-51A) (1~2 1~2-core POWER5 or POWER5+ CPUs) * IBM System p5 510Q (9110-51A) (1~2 4-core POWER5+ CPUs) * IBM System p5 520 (9131-52A) (1~2-core POWER5+ CPU) * IBM System p5 520Q (9131-52A) (4-core POWER5+ CPU) * IBM System p5 550 (9133-55A) (1~2 2-core POWER5+ CPUs) * IBM System p5 550Q (9133-55A) (1~2 4-core POWER5+ CPUs) * IBM System p5 560Q (9116-561) (1, 2 or 4 4-core POWER5+ CPUs) * IBM System p5 570 (9117-570) (1~8 2-core POWER5+ CPUs) * IBM System p5 575 (9118-575) (8 1~2-core POWER5+ CPUs) * IBM System p5 590 (9119-590) (1~2 16-core POWER5 or POWER5+ processor books) * IBM System p5 595 (9119-595) (1~4 16-core POWER5 or POWER5+ processor books)

System p

* IBM System p 520 Express (1, 2 or 4-core POWER6 CPU) * IBM System p 550 Express (1~4 2-core POWER6 CPUs) * IBM System p 560 Express (POWER6) * IBM System p 570 (POWER6) * IBM System p 575 (POWER6) * IBM System p 595 (9119-FHA) (1~8 8-core POWER6 processor books) System p was rebranded to Power Systems in 2008.

OpenPower

OpenPower was the name of a range of servers in the System p line from

. They featured IBM's

CPUs A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...

and run only 64-bit versions of

. IBM's own

variant, AIX is not supported since the OpenPower servers are not licensed for this

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. There were two models available, with a variety of configurations. Before 2005, OpenPower belonged to the eServer product line but were eventually rolled into the IBM's Power Systems product portfolio. * IBM eServer OpenPower 710 (9123-710) (1~2-core POWER5 CPU) * IBM eServer OpenPower 720 (9124-720) 1-4 POWER5 CPUs

IntelliStation POWER

* IBM IntelliStation POWER 265 * IBM IntelliStation POWER 275 * IBM IntelliStation POWER 185 (PowerPC 970) * IBM IntelliStation POWER 285

BladeCenter

* IBM BladeCenter JS20 (PowerPC 970) * IBM BladeCenter JS21 (PowerPC 970)

References

External links

IBM Power Systems product pageIBM's System AgendaVirtualizing an Infrastructure with System p and Linux
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ibm System P System p

History

Hardware and software

Processors

Features

Models

BladeCenter

Main line

eServer pSeries

eServer p5

System p5

System p

OpenPower

IntelliStation POWER

BladeCenter

See also

References

External links