IBM brings new Watson-inspired Power7 systems

ARMONK, USA: Server major IBM announced new workload-optimized Power7 systems, including a performance boost to the Power 750, the same server used in Watson, the Jeopardy! winner.

The company says that the new Power blades and upgraded Power servers are built to manage demanding emerging applications, used in healthcare management, financial services, scientific research and more.

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IBM claims that the new Power7 systems can provide high levels of server virtualization and consolidation.

According to IDC, IBM extended its lead in the Unix servers in the fourth quarter of 2010 by capturing 53.9 percent revenue share of that segment, gaining 5.9 points of share over competitors and leading the second-place vendor by more than 30 percent.

"Our strategy appears to be paying off as more and more customers choose Power Systems," said Tom Rosamilia, general manager, IBM Power and z Systems. "Today's Power announcements demonstrate IBM's ongoing investment in workload-optimized servers. Just two short months after publically demonstrating the future of computing with Watson and its advanced analytical and learning capabilities, IBM is upping the ante with a performance bump in the underlying system."

New and enhanced Power Systems products include:

New 16-core, single-wide IBM BladeCenter PS703 and 32-core, double-wide IBM BladeCenter PS704 blade servers.

IBM claims that PS704 delivers 60-percent faster performance with twice the number of cores while using the same amount and space and energy as previous Power7 blades. 

The Power 750 has been upgraded with several options, including a faster Power7 processor that offers more than three times the performance of comparable 32-core servers,  such as Oracle's SPARC T3-2 server, and more than twice the performance of HP's Integrity BL890c i2, says the company.

IBM also introduced a new Systems Director Management Console appliance that allows data centre administrators to operate both Power servers and blades with a unified, intuitive interface for physical and virtualized system resource management.

IBM is extending technology from the acquisition of Blade Network Technologies (BNT) across its portfolio of workload-optimized systems, including high performance top-of-rack BNT switches with VMready network virtualization and BladeHarmony management software.

IBM also announced additions to its Intelligent Cluster line of computing platforms -- pre-integrated solutions that build upon its rack servers including BladeCenter or iDataPlex platforms.