By Midland on Monday, 14 October 2024
Category: IBM Power 10

IBM Power 10 vs Power 9 with Performance & Cost

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary

IBM Power10 delivers markedly higher performance and efficiency compared to Power9—typically 20–30% more performance per core, and up to 2.6× better performance per watt. It brings new encryption, AI inference, and virtualization capabilities. However, upgrading requires architecture planning, cost evaluation, and alignment with workload characteristics.

2. Architectural Evolution: Power9 → Power10

Power9, launched in 2017 and built on 14 nm FinFET, implemented Power ISA v3.0 and came in SMT4/SMT8 variants for scale-out or scale-up environments. Power10 debuted in late 2021 on Samsung’s 7 nm EUV process, upgrading to Power ISA v3.1 and integrating matrix-math accelerators and enhanced acceleration logic designed for AI workloads.

3. Core & SMT Differences

IBM engineers note improved IPC due to increased execution slices, better branch prediction, and microarchitectural tuning.

4. Performance per Watt and Efficiency

A Power10 E1080 (15-core) system at approximately 17,320 watts delivers around 7,998 rPerf, compared to Power9’s ~5,081 rPerf at similar power. That’s a significant efficiency gain—ranging from 1.5× to 2.6×, depending on configuration and workload.

Enhancements like fused prefix instructions and smarter power gating contribute to per-core throughput improvements of 25–30%.

5. Memory, I/O, and Encryption

Power10 introduces Open Memory Interface (OMI) and PowerAXON, which offer:

Each core includes four AES engines, enabling transparent memory encryption with no performance hit. The platform is also equipped for post-quantum and homomorphic encryption workloads.

6. Real-World Enterprise Case Studies

A Latin American financial institution reported a 30% overall performance gain and 25% faster batch job execution after migrating to Power10. Zero downtime was achieved via logical partition (LPAR) orchestration. Multiple enterprise customers echo this efficiency—typically reducing hardware footprint and power usage without compromising throughput.

7. Total Cost of Ownership & Licensing

While Power10 hardware may carry a higher per-unit cost, the total cost of ownership drops in real deployments due to:

Software migration (especially for AIX and IBM i) may require new contracts or license upgrades, depending on customer entitlements.

8. Migration Considerations: Power9 → Power10

  1. Benchmark workload characteristics, especially I/O and encryption impact
  2. Plan LPAR-to-core mapping with SMT8 baseline in mind
  3. Review PCIe 5.0 compatibility and memory DIMM specs
  4. Prepare firmware and OS updates to support new security features
  5. Stage migrations with non-production workloads first

9. Final Takeaways for IT Decision-Makers