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New POWER7 machines

T

thunng8

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 8, 2006
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Not Mac news, but some PowerPC fans might be interested :cool:

IBM have announced low-end and high end POWER7 servers (they originally only released mid range and blade servers).

The High End server run at up to 4.25Ghz in turbo mode and 4.00Ghz in normal mode and can have up to 256 cores. It is a performance monster with >2X better performance /core than the high end Intel chips.

http://www.itjungle.com/fhs/fhs081710-story02.html

Also, low end 1 socket and 2 socket servers released (starting price of about $6k).

http://www.itjungle.com/fhs/fhs081710-story01.html

It is interesting to compare chips used in "lower" end machines:

The recently announced MacPro with 2 x 6 core 2.93Ghz "Westmere" chips gets:

http://www.apple.com/au/macpro/performance.html

297/197 in specint_rate/specfp_rate

Compared to the 730 Express server

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/730/perfdata.html

2 x 6 core 3.7Ghz POWER7 472/432
2 x 8 core 3.55Ghz POWER7 575/482

Take that intel! :D
 
DoFoT9

DoFoT9

macrumors P6
Jun 11, 2007
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London, United Kingdom
This is all so exciting!! Too bad their market is so small for implementation, you cNt exactly run everyday OSs on it!!

I hear these have 1/2 the transistor count too! Go IBM!
 
DoFoT9

DoFoT9

macrumors P6
Jun 11, 2007
17,586
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London, United Kingdom
thunng8 said:
They do own the UNIX server market
Click to expand...
true, not exactly mainstream though - I think.

Which is a shame.
Click to expand...
I was under the impression that the instruction sets were widely backwards compatible, I wonder if leopard would run on it :p but I guess there are marginal differrences between PowerPC and Power architectures. Red hat will run on it, which is a fairly usable OS :D

What industry are you in?
 
T

thunng8

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 8, 2006
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DoFoT9 said:
true, not exactly mainstream though - I think.


I was under the impression that the instruction sets were widely backwards compatible, I wonder if leopard would run on it :p but I guess there are marginal differrences between PowerPC and Power architectures. Red hat will run on it, which is a fairly usable OS :D

What industry are you in?
Click to expand...

POWER7 is completely backward compatible with PowerPC ISA used by the G5. In fact, it uses the PowerPC ISA. In theory, all the would be needed to make Leopard run is equip the POWER7 machine with the appropriate firmware.

I'm in IT industry (Financial company) - nothing too exciting, but I do deal with some large Unix installations once in a while
 
advres

advres

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Oct 3, 2003
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Boston
thunng8 said:
POWER7 is completely backward compatible with PowerPC ISA used by the G5. In fact, it uses the PowerPC ISA. In theory, all the would be needed to make Leopard run is equip the POWER7 machine with the appropriate firmware.
Click to expand...

So anyway I can slap em in my dual 2.0G5?
 
DoFoT9

DoFoT9

macrumors P6
Jun 11, 2007
17,586
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London, United Kingdom
thunng8 said:
POWER7 is completely backward compatible with PowerPC ISA used by the G5. In fact, it uses the PowerPC ISA. In theory, all the would be needed to make Leopard run is equip the POWER7 machine with the appropriate firmware.
Click to expand...
very exciting! imagine that.. G7 Mac. :D i am not certain if it would run though, given 32-bit vs 64-bit, and the memory limitations :p

I'm in IT industry (Financial company) - nothing too exciting, but I do deal with some large Unix installations once in a while
Click to expand...
nice man :) im in Uni at the moment, getting into networking and security. thanks very much for this thread, i work for IBM at the moment - always goods to show my interest at work for brownie points :D
 
K

kbfr08

macrumors 6502
Mar 16, 2007
462
29
I can only imagine how hot these things run, check out the gigantic air movement devices inside of this server: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=Tp2bD_wTTR0&feature=related


also, the chip is huge
IBM_Employee_with_POWER7_Ceramic_Module_1_.jpg
 
T

thunng8

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 8, 2006
1,032
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kbfr08 said:
I can only imagine how hot these things run, check out the gigantic air movement devices inside of this server: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=Tp2bD_wTTR0&feature=related


also, the chip is huge
IBM_Employee_with_POWER7_Ceramic_Module_1_.jpg
Click to expand...

That's an MCM module. The High end chips are packaged in an MCM module containing 4 POWER7 chips. That's a total of 32 cores. Maximum Power consumed by the module is around 800W. Considering its performance, that is not a lot and in fact would beat most Nehalem Xeon chips in performance/watt (except possible for the Ultra low voltage models).

More information here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/27/ibm_power7_hpc_server/page2.html

Low and mid range chips are not package this way - the POWER7 chip actually contains less transistors than the Intel Nehalem-EX chip.
 
yamabushi

yamabushi

macrumors 65816
Oct 6, 2003
1,009
1
I think some people over at IBM should just go ahead and show leopard running on a POWER7 server. Sure they would have to deal with the firmware bit but there are few ways to solve that problem. Then run a benchmark to see if you have created the most powerful non-clustered OSX computer. Send the benchmark to Steve Jobs and offer to provide POWER7 for use in a build to order big iron Mac server. Could even just rebadge the IBM enclosure. As a BTO if they don't sell many it's no big deal. It might be useful just to scare intel a little bit.
 
DoFoT9

DoFoT9

macrumors P6
Jun 11, 2007
17,586
99
London, United Kingdom
yamabushi said:
I think some people over at IBM should just go ahead and show leopard running on a POWER7 server. Sure they would have to deal with the firmware bit but there are few ways to solve that problem. Then run a benchmark to see if you have created the most powerful non-clustered OSX computer. Send the benchmark to Steve Jobs and offer to provide POWER7 for use in a build to order big iron Mac server. Could even just rebadge the IBM enclosure. As a BTO if they don't sell many it's no big deal. It might be useful just to scare intel a little bit.
Click to expand...

stop making me drool, my keyboard doesn't like that :rolleyes:
 
T

thunng8

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 8, 2006
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DoFoT9 said:
i am not very fond of hyperthreading - i wonder how performance changes when single/multi threaded applications are compared.
Click to expand...

Hard to say. Obviously the performance differential between the POWER7 and Westmere would be less for single threaded applications.
 
Jason Beck

Jason Beck

macrumors 68000
Oct 19, 2009
1,913
0
Cedar City, Utah
yamabushi said:
I think some people over at IBM should just go ahead and show leopard running on a POWER7 server. Sure they would have to deal with the firmware bit but there are few ways to solve that problem. Then run a benchmark to see if you have created the most powerful non-clustered OSX computer. Send the benchmark to Steve Jobs and offer to provide POWER7 for use in a build to order big iron Mac server. Could even just rebadge the IBM enclosure. As a BTO if they don't sell many it's no big deal. It might be useful just to scare intel a little bit.
Click to expand...

+1,000,000
 
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