IBM takes wraps off speedy server

IBM has announced two high-end Power System models, claimed to be the world's fastest Unix server, and a water-cooled supercomputer.

The company said that the new systems offer IBM virtualisation technology and energy-saving capabilities would help reduce operating costs, such as those for energy, floor space and systems management, while improving system performance, helping customers transition to a new enterprise datacentre.

The new Unix enterprise server, the Power 595 will be useful to existing IBM clients as well as Sun Solaris and HP Unix users.

IBM's new PowerR6 'Hydro-Cluster' supercomputer, the Power 575, is built to help users tackle some challenging problems in fields such as energy, aerospace and weather modelling. The new super-dense system, representing a breakthrough in green IT, uses a unique, in-rack, water-cooling system and - with 448 processor cores per rack - offers users nearly five times the performance and more than three times the energy efficiency of its predecessor, IBM's POWER5+ processor-based p575 supercomputer.

IBM claimed that these advanced processors deliver two-to-three times the performance per core of comparable HP or Sun processors. And significant energy conservation design improvements enable Power6 to deliver twice the performance requiring nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it as its Power5 predecessor.

Featuring up to 254 virtualised partitions, the Power 595 offers leadership virtualisation technology for large-scale consolidation with optional PowerVM technology.

PowerVM Enterprise Edition offers Live Partition Mobility on the Power 595, allowing an entire AIX or Linux partition to be moved, while running, to another Power6 processor-based system, allowing the reduction or elimination of planned downtime and increasing application availability.

The two new computers are part of a comprehensive launch of a new generation of IBM Power Systems that began last week.