IBM Reveals Next-Generation IBM POWER10 Processor

New CPU co-opti­mi­zed for Red Hat Open­S­hift for enter­pri­se hybrid cloud

ARMONK, N.Y.Aug. 17, 2020 /PRNews­wire/ — IBM (NYSEIBM) today reve­a­led the next gene­ra­ti­on of its IBM POWER cen­tral pro­ces­sing unit (CPU) fami­ly: IBM POWER10. Desi­gned to offer a plat­form to meet the uni­que needs of enter­pri­se hybrid cloud com­pu­ting, the IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor uses a design focu­sed on ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and per­for­mance in a 7nm form fac­tor with an expec­ted impro­ve­ment of up to 3x grea­ter pro­ces­sor ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy, workload capa­ci­ty, and con­tai­ner den­si­ty than the IBM POWER9 pro­ces­sor.1

Desi­gned over five years with hundreds of new and pen­ding patents, the IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor is an important evo­lu­ti­on in IBM’s road­map for POWER. Sys­tems taking advan­ta­ge of IBM POWER10 are expec­ted to be available in the second half of 2021. Some of the new pro­ces­sor inno­va­tions include:

  • IBM’s First Com­mer­cia­li­zed 7nm Pro­ces­sor that is expec­ted to deli­ver up to a 3x impro­ve­ment in capa­ci­ty and pro­ces­sor ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy within the same power enve­lo­pe as IBM POWER9, allo­wing for grea­ter per­for­mance.1
  • Sup­port for Mul­ti-Peta­byte Memo­ry Clus­ters with a breakth­rough new tech­no­lo­gy cal­led Memo­ry Incep­ti­on, desi­gned to impro­ve cloud capa­ci­ty and eco­no­mics for memo­ry-inten­si­ve workloads from ISVs like SAP, the SAS Insti­tu­te, and others as well as lar­ge-model AI inference.
  • New Hard­ware-Enab­led Secu­ri­ty Capa­bi­li­ties inclu­ding trans­pa­rent memo­ry encryp­ti­on desi­gned to sup­port end-to-end secu­ri­ty. The IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor is engi­nee­red to achie­ve signi­fi­cant­ly fas­ter encryp­ti­on per­for­mance with qua­dru­ple the num­ber of AES encryp­ti­on engi­nes per core com­pared to IBM POWER9 for today’s most deman­ding stan­dards and anti­ci­pa­ted future cryp­to­gra­phic stan­dards like quan­tum-safe cryp­to­gra­phy and ful­ly homo­mor­phic encryp­ti­on. It also brings new enhance­ments to con­tai­ner security.
  • New Pro­ces­sor Core Archi­tec­tures in the IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor with an embedded Matrix Math Acce­le­ra­tor which is extra­po­la­ted to pro­vi­de 10x, 15x and 20x fas­ter AI infe­rence for FP32, BFloat16 and INT8 cal­cu­la­ti­ons per socket respec­tively than the IBM POWER9 pro­ces­sor to infu­se AI into busi­ness appli­ca­ti­ons and dri­ve grea­ter insights.

Enter­pri­se-gra­de hybrid clouds requi­re a robust on-pre­mi­ses and off-site archi­tec­tu­re inclu­si­ve of hard­ware and co-opti­mi­zed soft­ware,” said Ste­phen Leo­nard, GM of IBM Cogni­ti­ve Sys­tems. “With IBM POWER10 we’­ve desi­gned the pre­mier pro­ces­sor for enter­pri­se hybrid cloud, deli­ve­ring the per­for­mance and secu­ri­ty that cli­ents expect from IBM. With our sta­ted goal of making Red Hat Open­S­hift the default choice for hybrid cloud, IBM POWER10 brings hard­ware-based capa­ci­ty and secu­ri­ty enhance­ments for con­tai­ners to the IT infra­struc­tu­re level.”

IBM POWER10 7nm Form Fac­tor Deli­vers Ener­gy Effi­ci­en­cy and Capa­ci­ty Gains

IBM POWER10 is IBM’s first com­mer­cia­li­zed pro­ces­sor built using 7nm pro­cess tech­no­lo­gy. IBM Rese­arch has been part­ne­ring with Sam­sung Elec­tro­nics Co., Ltd. on rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment for more than a deca­de, inclu­ding demons­tra­ti­on of the semi­con­duc­tor industry’s first 7nm test chips through IBM’s Rese­arch Alli­ance.

With this updated tech­no­lo­gy and a focus on desig­ning for per­for­mance and effi­ci­en­cy, IBM POWER10 is expec­ted to deli­ver up to a 3x gain in pro­ces­sor ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy per socket, incre­asing workload capa­ci­ty in the same power enve­lo­pe as IBM POWER9. This anti­ci­pa­ted impro­ve­ment in capa­ci­ty is desi­gned to allow IBM POWER10-based sys­tems to sup­port up to 3x increa­ses in users, workloads and Open­S­hift con­tai­ner den­si­ty for hybrid cloud workloads as com­pared to IBM POWER9-based sys­tems. 1

This can affect mul­ti­ple dat­a­cen­ter attri­bu­tes to dri­ve grea­ter effi­ci­en­cy and redu­ce cos­ts, such as space and ener­gy use, while also allo­wing hybrid cloud users to achie­ve more work in a smal­ler footprint.

Hard­ware Enhance­ments to Fur­ther Secu­re the Hybrid Cloud

IBM POWER10 offers hard­ware memo­ry encryp­ti­on for end-to-end secu­ri­ty and fas­ter cryp­to­gra­phy per­for­mance thanks to addi­tio­nal AES encryp­ti­on engi­nes for both today’s lea­ding encryp­ti­on stan­dards as well as anti­ci­pa­ted future encryp­ti­on pro­to­cols like quan­tum-safe cryp­to­gra­phy and ful­ly homo­mor­phic encryption.

Fur­ther, to address new secu­ri­ty con­side­ra­ti­ons asso­cia­ted with the hig­her den­si­ty of con­tai­ners, IBM POWER10 is desi­gned to deli­ver new hard­ware-enforced con­tai­ner pro­tec­tion and iso­la­ti­on capa­bi­li­ties co-deve­lo­ped with the IBM POWER10 firm­ware. If a con­tai­ner were to be com­pro­mi­sed, the POWER10 pro­ces­sor is desi­gned to be able to pre­vent other con­tai­ners in the same Vir­tu­al Machi­ne (VM) from being affec­ted by the same intrusion.

Cyber­at­tacks are con­ti­nuing to evol­ve, and new­ly dis­co­ver­ed vul­nerabi­li­ties can cau­se dis­rup­ti­ons as orga­niza­ti­ons wait for fixes. To bet­ter enable cli­ents to proac­tively defend against cer­tain new appli­ca­ti­on vul­nerabi­li­ties in real-time, IBM POWER10 is desi­gned to give users dyna­mic exe­cu­ti­on regis­ter con­trol, mea­ning users could design appli­ca­ti­ons that are more resistant to attacks with mini­mal per­for­mance loss.

Mul­ti-Peta­byte Size Memo­ry Clus­te­ring Gives Fle­xi­bi­li­ty for Mul­ti­ple Hybrid Deployments

IBM POWER has long been a lea­der in sup­port­ing a wide ran­ge of fle­xi­ble deploy­ments for hybrid cloud and on-pre­mi­ses workloads through a com­bi­na­ti­on of hard­ware and soft­ware capa­bi­li­ties. The IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor is desi­gned to ele­va­te this with the abili­ty to pool or clus­ter phy­si­cal memo­ry across IBM POWER10-based sys­tems, once available, in a varie­ty of con­fi­gu­ra­ti­ons. In a breakth­rough new tech­no­lo­gy cal­led Memo­ry Incep­ti­on, the IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor is desi­gned to allow any of the IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor-based sys­tems in a clus­ter to access and share each other’s memo­ry, crea­ting mul­ti-Peta­byte sized memo­ry clusters.

For both cloud users and pro­vi­ders, Memo­ry Incep­ti­on offers the poten­ti­al to dri­ve cost and ener­gy savings, as cloud pro­vi­ders can offer more capa­bi­li­ty using fewer ser­vers, while cloud users can lea­se fewer resour­ces to meet their IT needs. 

Infu­sing AI into the Enter­pri­se Hybrid Cloud to Dri­ve Deeper Insights

As AI con­ti­nues to be more and more embedded into busi­ness appli­ca­ti­ons in tran­sac­tion­al and ana­ly­ti­cal work­flows, AI infe­ren­cing is beco­ming cen­tral to enter­pri­se appli­ca­ti­ons. The IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor is desi­gned to enhan­ce in-core AI infe­ren­cing capa­bi­li­ty wit­hout requi­ring addi­tio­nal spe­cia­li­zed hardware.

With an embedded Matrix Math Acce­le­ra­tor, the IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor is expec­ted to achie­ve 10x, 15x, and 20x fas­ter AI infe­rence for FP32, BFloat16 and INT8 cal­cu­la­ti­ons respec­tively to impro­ve per­for­mance for enter­pri­se AI infe­rence workloads as com­pared to IBM POWER9,2 hel­ping enter­pri­ses take the AI models they trai­ned and put them to work in the field. With IBM’s broad port­fo­lio of AI soft­ware, IBM POWER10 is expec­ted to help infu­se AI workloads into typi­cal enter­pri­se appli­ca­ti­ons to glean more impactful insights from data.

Buil­ding the Enter­pri­se Hybrid Cloud of the Future

With hard­ware co-opti­mi­zed for Red Hat Open­S­hift, IBM POWER10-based ser­vers will deli­ver the future of the hybrid cloud when they beco­me available in the second half of 2021. Sam­sung Elec­tro­nics will manu­fac­tu­re the IBM POWER10 pro­ces­sor, com­bi­ning Samsung’s indus­try-lea­ding semi­con­duc­tor manu­fac­tu­ring tech­no­lo­gy with IBM’s CPU designs.

Read more about how IBM POWER10 is expec­ted to impact the enter­pri­se hybrid cloud mar­ket, here: https://newsroom.ibm.com/Stephen-Leonard-POWER10.

About IBM

For more infor­ma­ti­on about IBM Power Sys­tems visit: https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/power

Red Hat, Red Hat Enter­pri­se Linux, the Red Hat logo and Open­S­hift are trade­marks or regis­tered trade­marks of Red Hat, Inc. or its sub­si­dia­ries in the U.S. and other count­ries. Linux® is the regis­tered trade­mark of Linus Tor­valds in the U.S. and other countries.

CONTACT:

Sam Pone­dal

sponeda@us.ibm.com 

1 3X per­for­mance is based upon pre-sili­con engi­nee­ring ana­ly­sis of Inte­ger, Enter­pri­se and Floa­ting Point envi­ron­ments on a POWER10 dual socket ser­ver offe­ring with 2x30-core modu­les vs POWER9 dual socket ser­ver offe­ring with 2x12-core modu­les; both modu­les have the same ener­gy level.

2 10–20X AI infe­ren­cing impro­ve­ment is based upon pre-sili­con engi­nee­ring ana­ly­sis of various workloads (Lin­pack. Res­net-50 FP32, Res­net-50 BFloat16, and Res­net-50 INT8) on a POWER10 dual socket ser­ver offe­ring with 2x30-core modu­les vs POWER9 dual socket ser­ver offe­ring with 2x12-core modules.