Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/11/ibm_power_plus/
IBM begins third phase of Power5+ journey
Fewer cores, more options
Posted in Hardware, 11th July 2006 17:43 GMT
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IBM appears set to underwhelm customers once again with a sprucing of its Power5+ - based server line.
The vendor has put customers on notice that its Power 285 workstation is now available with 1-core and 2-core versions of the Power5+ chip. Both versions run at 2.1GHz and ship with - wait for it - 36MB of Level 3 cache. We feel more manly just by writing that.
IBM is expected to offer up the one- and two-core versions of 1.9GHz and 2.1GHz chips across the low-end of its Unix hardware line over time.
On July 25, IBM should also announce faster versions of the Power5+ chip for its high-end System P gear, according to some reporter at IT Jungle. IBM's giant p5 590 and 595 boxes still run on 1.65GHz and 1.9GHz chips and could use the 2GHz+ products available elsewhere in the System P lineup.
"IBM's plan for the System p line apparently involves the use of 2.1 GHz multichip modules in the p5 590+ server, spanning from eight to 32 cores, while the p5 595+ machine will have from 16 to 64 cores, and will apparently have MCMs that run at two possible speeds, 2.1 GHz and 2.3 GHz," said the Jungle people [1].
Like rivals Intel and Sun, IBM has disappointed customers with the latest iteration of its high-end processor line. When IBM shipped the Power5+ chip last October, it did so without a speed bump at all. It took IBM until February to start shipping 2.2GHz Power5+ chips that surged past the old 1.9GHz Power5 products.
Beyond all that, customers had once been told that Power5+ would reach 3.0GHz. That hardly seems likely now. 2.3GHz will have to do.
Launching the new gear on July 25 lets IBM have the high-end stage to itself. Sun today unveiled fresh, high-end Opteron systems, while Intel and HP will celebrate the new dual-core Itanium chip next week. ®