IBM fires up new p5 servers

IBM Corp. Tuesday rolled out a raft of new servers based on its Power5+ processors, including a new server with a Power5+ chip running at 2.2GHz and several new machines based on its quad-core module (QCM) technology that allows four Power5+ 1.5GHz cores to plug into a single socket.

Built with the new 2.2GHz Power5+ chip, IBM's new p5 570 midrange Unix server ramps up the speed over its first Power5+-based servers released last October, which topped out at 1.9GHz. IBM says the new machine is geared for large database, ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) applications or server consolidation.

IBM said earlier this month that it plans to ramp up the clock speeds even more in its next-generation Power6 processors. At the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco last week, the company touted new circuit design techniques that it says will boost speeds to more than 4GHz without dramatically increasing power requirements, although details of the architecture are still scant at this point.

For high-performance computing, IBM also on Tuesday rolled out a new supercomputer building block with its 2.2GHz Power5+ processor, the IBM System p5 575.

Also new are several servers with IBM's QCM technology, including the new midrange p5 560Q with four 1.5GHz Power5+ processors, which IBM says is geared for medium-to-large, database-intensive and Web application implementations. IBM first introduced its QCM technology into its servers last year with the p5 550Q.

IBM Tuesday also released a low-cost workstation that uses its PowerPC 970 processor. The IntelliStation Power 185 Express workstation using a single- or dual-core PowerPC 970 processor. IBM last week rolled out its first blade server built with the dual-core PowerPC 970MP processor, the BladeCenter JS21, which it is targeting for the bioinformatics, grid computing, retail, manufacturing and petroleum research companies.

As part of the server rollout, IBM is offering users who buy IBM's new QCM-based p5 servers a 50 percent price reduction on IBM middleware, such as WebSphere Application Server and DB2 Enterprise Server Edition, said Karl Freund, vice president, IBM pSeries, in Armonk, New York.