IBM Unveils New Power 5+ Systems

IBM on Tuesday unveiled the first servers to be based on the Power 5+ processor, squarely aimed at solidifying the company's dominance in the UNIX server market over rivals Sun, HP and Dell. The new processors will be offered in IBM's low-end models first, gradually being introduced to the company's mid- and higher-end servers during 2006.

The purpose of the "bottom to top" rollout is to give small and medium sized businesses a chance at the computing power that had previously only been available to larger corporations that have bigger IT budgets, according to Jeff Howard, program director for P5 product marketing at IBM.

Howard also told BetaNews that the company is staying above the spat that has recently developed between Sun and Dell in the media. "We've been focused on delivering the best server at the best price," he said.

Further differentiating IBM from its competitors is its already long-standing commitment to multi-core processors, it says. "While we're delivering our fourth generation of multi-core technology, other companies are only coming to market with their first generation implementation of the technology," Howard noted.

The Power5+ processor will come in speeds of 1.5 GHz and 1.9 GHz, and will be available in a model that would include four cores on a single chip. The four-core version is slated to come with the p5 550q server, running at 1.5GHz per core with the capability to run two threads of instructions at the same time.

Also available Tuesday is the single-socket p5 520 and dual-socket p5 550 running on a 1.9GHz dual-core chip, intended for database work; the p5 505, IBM's first Power 5 server in a 1U form factor; and the p5 575, equipped with eight dual-core 1.5GHz Power 5+ chips.

For those who might be confused as to how IBM's server processors relate to its PowerPC offerings, Howard explained that the Power 5 and Power5+ chips are not the same as the G5 chips in Apple's iMac and Power Mac systems. While the G5 shares the same architecture, it is based on Power 4 technology, first introduced in 2001. "This is a new implementation of that technology," he said.

Also introduced alongside the servers was a new virtualization manager, as well as a version of IBM's Director 5.1 product compatible with Power 5 chips. "Both these applications are intended to make server management easier for small and medium business uses," Howard said.

The Power 5+ based servers will be made available starting October 14.