IBM Debuts Power 8 for Big Data
Has Big Data met its match? IBM recently announced its new line up of Power 8 CPUs that are designed to tackle Big Data workloads. The new Power 8 processors are fully compatible with latest release of Ubuntu (14.04 LTS). The OpenStack community has officially endorsed this lineup of processors as being one of the most innovative solutions for Big Data workloads. Building a private cloud based on Power 8 servers and processors has distinct advantages over other alternatives available in the market today.
Tom Rosamilia, the senior VP for IBMs Systems and Technology group said that this processor is ground breaking in terms of what it can do for organizations. When coupled with IBM’s partnerships with OpenStack developers, this lineup of processors sets the stage for a new era in datacenter technology.
Rosamilia is quoted as saying, “This is the first truly disruptive advancement in high-end server technology in decades, with radical technology changes and the full support of an open server ecosystem that will seamlessly lead our clients into this world of massive data volumes and complexity.”
On June 10th 2014, IBM plans to release 5 new servers in the Power 8 lineup. The S814, S822 and S824 will be available with AIX, Linux or OS/400. The other two models are the S812L and S822L which come equipped with only Power Linux. Cloud decision makers are able to choose between the 2U and the 4U version of this line up and the price tag starts out around $8,000. The Power 8 chip features 12 internal cores which run up to 8 threads each. The internal clock speed is set at 4GHZ and each socket can support up to 1TB of memory.
IBM recently touted this new innovation at the Open Innovation Summit. At the summit, IBM demonstrated Power 8’s abilities using open source software designed to handle Big Data. As you would expect, this processor and server lineup fully supports the latest features of the OpenStack framework.
