UPDATED 08:58 EDT / OCTOBER 09 2015

NEWS

IBM POWERS up new Linux servers for Big Data workloads

Technologies like Apache Spark and Hadoop have already delivered on their promise to help enterprises extract insights from their Big Data. Now, organizations are hungry for advanced IT infrastructure systems to get the most out of these tools, with more choice, greater flexibility and better price-performance than typical x86 servers provide.

To that end, IBM has just unveiled a new line of Power servers designed for Big Data workloads on Linux. Called Power Systems LC, the new servers are designed to compete directly with the Intel-based x86 servers that have become more or less the standard in the enterprise. The new offerings incorporate technologies developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, an organization backed by companies including Canonical Ltd., Mellanox Technologies, NVIDIA Corp., and Tyan Computer Corp. that aims to build solutions atop of the open architecture of IBM’s POWER processor.

IBM said its Power Systems LC servers are an entirely new product line separate from the L product line for Linux that was launched last year.

“This server didn’t exist before. It’s not an incremental launch but a completely new product line,” Sumit Gupta, VP, High-Performance Computing & OpenPOWER Operations at IBM, told SiliconANGLE.

Gupta said the Power Systems LC servers are aimed specifically at Big Data analytics, cloud and high performance computing (HPC) workloads. He boasted that Power Systems LC offers more than twice the performance per dollar spent versus comparable x86 systems, and a massive 94 percent performance improvement when it comes to Apache Spark workloads.

“We’re competing with the standard Xeon servers,” Gupta said. “We’ve taken the performance of these Power processors, which used to be available only in System Z and AIX and brought it into the Linux market.”

“This came out of our research that indicated clients were using a second socket only to get more memory,” Gupta continued. “So we doubled the amount of memory in the single socket and put in up to 14 hard drives. So if you’re using Hadoop or Spark, it’s optimized for that use.”

There are three choices in the initial Power Systems LC lineup. First up is the S812LC, a 1-socket 2U system that comes with up to 10 cores, 1TB of memory, 115GB/sec memory bandwidth, and up to 14 disk drives out of the box. The system has been optimized for the kind of memory and storage-rich workload best performed on Spark or Hadoop.

Meanwhile the 2-socket 2U Power Systems S822LC comes in two variations, one for commercial and one for high-performance computing. Both systems are similarly configured with up to 20 cores, 1 TB of memory and 230 GB/sec memory bandwidth. The main difference between the two is that the S822LC for high performance computing also features two integrated NVIDIA Tesla K80 GPU accelerators, but IBM says that in any case, both variants offer twice the performance per core, 40% better price performance, and more than twice the memory bandwidth compared to similarly configured x86 servers.

Gupta explained that the 822LC for high-performance computing comes with two GPUs as standard, whereas they’re absent in the commercial variety. The GPUs are primarily used to support scientific and machine learning workloads, Gupta said, delivering three to five times the performance compared to a CPU-only servers.

“It’s very optimized for cloud workloads and high-performance computing,” Gupta said. “We believe that’s the fastest-growing market that’s optimized for performance.”

IBM’s Power Systems LC servers are available now. More details can be found here.

Photo Credit: dataforgecanada via Compfight cc

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