IBM unveiled its next generation central processing unit (CPU) family, the IBM Power10 on Monday. The Power10 is IBM’s first commercialized processor built using the 7nm process technology.
IBM Research has been partnering with Samsung on research and development, and Samsung will be manufacturing the processors, says IBM.
Systems with the Power10 chip are expected to be available in the second half of 2021.
Let’s take a look at what’s new with the Power10:
- Includes support for multi-petabyte memory clusters (with a new technology called Memory Inception; where the processor can allow any of the Power10 processor-based systems in a cluster to access and share each other’s memory).
- Hardware-enabled security capabilities include transparent memory encryption designed for end-to-end security.
- The Power10 processor can achieve faster encryption performance with quadruple the number of AES encryption engines per core, as compared to IBM Power9.
- New processor core architectures, with an embedded Matrix Math Accelerator which is extrapolated to provide 10x, 15x and 20x faster AI inference for FP32, BFloat16 and INT8 calculations per socket respectively, than the IBM Power9 processor.
- The Power10 is expected to deliver up to a 3x gain in processor energy efficiency per socket, increasing workload capacity in the same power envelope as IBM Power9, as per IBM.
- Hardware-enforced container protection and isolation capabilities co-developed with the Power10 firmware.
- Can give users dynamic execution register control.
- The hardware co-optimized for Red Hat OpenShift.
Power10-based servers are expected to become available in the second half of 2021.
You can find a Q&A on Power10 with IBM Cognitive Systems general manager Stephen Leonard here.
[Image courtesy: IBM]