As the race for technologies to support high performance computing and complex event processing persistently gathers pace, big vendors are continuing to ramp up their storage, processing, and virtualization capabilities. Typical of the product launches in this space are IBM's latest Power 7 systems, which the company boldly states will, "offer better energy efficiency than competitive systems from Oracle and HP."
The new systems comprise servers, software, and IBM’s PowerVM virtualization technology. They are part of a year-long rollout by IBM of workload-optimized systems for the demands of emerging business models such as smart electrical grids, real-time analytics in financial markets and healthcare, mobile telecommunications, and smarter traffic systems.
IBM says that its new 256-core IBM Power 795 offers more than five times better energy efficiency compared to servers from Oracle and HP. The products use IBM’s EnergyScale technology that varies frequencies depending upon workloads and supports up to eight terabytes of memory and four times as many processor cores as prior systems.
With Power 7 technology enabling customers to run over 1,000 virtual servers on a single physical system, IBM is hoping to provide a technology platform that will allow for workload growth in existing datacenters and help companies avoid the cost of expanding or building new data centers.
As expansive as IBM's Power 7 offerings are, the company's combination of systems, processors, systems software, operating systems, and middleware is arguably more open to being challenged now that Oracle has Sun's technology under its roof. The next movements in this market should make for interesting viewing.
