IBM Touts New Power 5 Servers

"This is a solid two-year advantage versus our competitors," says Mark Papermaster, vice president of technology development for IBM's Systems Group in Austin, Texas.

To stake that claim, IBM is spotlighting the systems' use of its new Power 5 microprocessor and of innovative control software dubbed the IBM "Virtualization Engine."

The Power 5, which was publicly unveiled in March, is IBM's latest iteration of its RISC microprocessor architecture. The 64-bit device has a top clock speed of 1.9 GHz and beats Intel to the punch as the industry's first dual-core part.

As for the software engine, it implements what IBM calls "Micro-Partitioning" -- the ability to run multiple, virtual servers on a single processor. This enables one CPU to do the work of many. "It dynamically allocates system resources to get 80 percent system utilization," Papermaster explains. That gives the machines the flexibility to handle widely varying workload demands.

The effect is multiplied in the eServer P5s, since they're offered in three models with configurations ranging from two to 16 processors. As well, they can run Linux simultaneously alongside IBM's AIX flavor of Unix.

In appealing to VARs, IBM seems to be using the midrange status of the new servers as a jumping-off point from which it can extend its applicability both up-market and down.

"It's a very broad-based system," Papermaster says. "It runs commercial, technical and SMB workloads. It takes what we've traditionally had in the high end and moves [it] down to our mid- and lower ends."

Integrators say that the one-two punch of multiple-processor configurations and micro-partitioning together make the eServer p5 a potent sell to end users looking to combine groups of standalone machines into a single, more powerful unit.

"Server consolidation is definitely the big target for us with the new Power 5 architecture," says Leif Morin, president of reseller Key Information Systems in Woodland Hills, Calif., which is an IBM business partner. "The virtualization and logical partitioning is the stuff we're going to be able to leverage."

Success in consolidation could certainly help IBM is its pitched market battle with HP and Sun. IBM currently holds the lead in worldwide Unix server revenue, though HP is ahead in unit sales, according to the latest figures from Framingham, Mass.-based market analysts IDC. In the first quarter of 2004, IBM's revenue in that segment totaled $3.41 billion, for a 29.7 percent share. HP took in $3.10 billion, for a 26.9 percent share. Sun rang up $1.17 billion, for a 10.2 percent share.

IBM's new boxes will compete most immediately with HP's HP9000 server family, which comes in a variety of 2- to 32-way configurations equipped with the PA-8800 PA-RISC processor clocked at 900 MHz or 1 GHz. Sun offers two different lines of its Sun Fire midrange servers, built around its UltraSparc IV or UltraSparc III microprocessors, respectively.

IBM's eServer P5 introduction is its second step in recent months toward re-energizing its servers with the new Power 5. The first, introduced in May, was the eServer i5, which runs IBM's proprietary OS/400 operating system aimed at the SMB market.

A basic eServer p5-520 system starts at around $12,900. The eServer p5-570 configurations begin at approximately $26,000.