An Overview of IBM Power10 2024 Updates

Small businesses, mid-sized companies, and large enterprises can all benefit from the features and functions offered by the IBM Power Systems. These systems make it easy for companies to upgrade their legacy systems reliably and without any security concerns.

You can unlock a lot of value by migrating from a legacy IBM system to the newer generation systems. One of these systems is the IBM Power10. Here, we review all the updates to the IBM Power10 in 2024 so you know what functionality you can expect from this system.

What Is The IBM Power10?

Before we get to the 2024 updates to IBM Power10, it is important to know what this system is and when it was released. The first time the Power10 processors from IBM were made public was during the 2020 Hot Chips conference. A year later, IBM made the E1080 Enterprise Systems available for use. These are the servers powering the IBM Power10.

Power10 uses a 7 nm technology and is the first chip from IBM to do so. This chip comes equipped with 18 billion transistors. Additionally, a single system can support over two hundred cores and the carbon footprint is half of that produced by POWER8 and less than thirty percent of POWER9.

What Are The Updates to the IBM Power10 in 2024?

Now that you know what the IBM Power10 is, you would want to get all the latest updates on the system. Here are some of the main updates made to the IBM Power10 in 2024.

Advanced Security Features

The IBM Power10 is now equipped with advanced security features for a fool-proof performance. Every core in IBM Power10 has several crypto engines to allow SHA3, SHA2, AES, and other algorithms to run faster or more than two times faster than POWER9.

You can also now benefit from the added security provided by the transparent and automatic data encryption in the main memory in the Power10 system. It is possible to encrypt data at rest at a performance overhead that is not very high. Examples of this are IBM I Auxiliary Storage Pool and AIX Logical Volume.

Also, enhancements made to the crypto engine allow the system to provide support for Quantum-safe and other techniques for cryptography we will see in the near future. Lastly, you can use the end-to-end encryption in Power10 to securely run hybrid cloud environments.

A Focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

2024 updates include a focus on improving the Power10 processors using AI technology. Each core now contains four Matrix Math Assist (MMA) units. What does this help accomplish? It makes it possible to execute matrix or tensor computations using AI models without the help of GPUs or other outside accelerators. It has helped to improved performance by as much as 20 times.

You can also infer right on the operational server now, near the data and integrating your business applications with AI capability. It is now also possible to train AI models from anywhere, i.e. in Xx86 systems, IBM Power Systems, and the cloud. You can use this to use the commodity hardware for building and training the models, but implement them near the data using Power E1080 Enterprise Servers for better performance.

Enhanced Memory

You will now find the Open Memory Interface (OMI) memory function in the E1080 Enterprise Servers enabling the Power10 systems. What does this help to achieve? It helps to improve memory by two times for critical applications compared to DIMMs, which are the standard in the industry.

Also, the subsystem of the memory has a bandwidth of over 1600 GB/s for each drawer, which is almost twice as much as POWER9. However, there is no updated total memory, and it remains at 64TB for a system that is fully configured and 16TB for each drawer. However, the bandwidth of the memory is more than two and a half times higher than the x86 processor, so you can scale as per your needs. Also, encryption is standard with all memory, and it does not result in a performance penalty.

One new feature that was added in 2024 is “Memory Inception”. It makes it possible to access neighbouring nodes’ memory through clustered servers’ workloads with high bandwidth and low latency. An example is the use of systems 2 and 3’s memory by workload X running on system 1. You can access the memory anywhere, even though the workloads run on a solitary system. You can support potentially 1000s of nodes and up to two addressable memory petabytes with this.

Greater Efficiency

The IBM Power10 chip now uses a 7 nm technology for its processes. It allows it to perform significantly better per watt of power than what was possible with the 14 nm initially used in the Power10 system. It makes this system more powerful and energy-efficient than its predecessor.

Better Performance

One area where the IBM Power10 outdoes the Power9 is performance and it has only gotten better with the updates in 2024. It is now possible for the E1080 servers enabling the Power10 system to increase its performance per core by up to thirty percent while increase its socket and system level’s total capacity by 50%.

Its per-core performance is also significantly higher than its predecessors (as much as 80%) than to the powerful two-mode box. This is evident from the 955k SAPS ratings of the E1080 system on the two-tier benchmark of SAP HANA, which uses 100 cores and eight sockets. Google Cloud, in comparison, achieves just over 890k SAPS by using more than 4 times cores and twice as many sockets.

It shows how incredibly well the IBM Power10 and its E1080 server perform, especially after the updates made to them in 2024.

Reasons To Upgrade to IBM Power10

If you’re still using the Power8 or Power9 systems, you will need to consider the benefits of upgrading to Power10. The first and foremost benefit is that the Power10 will help you to keep up with your competitors who are already using the system. Another reason to upgrade to Power10 is to keep your business aligned with all its software and technology needs.

There are many other benefits of upgrading to the IBM Power10 system but you may be concerned that you do not have the personnel to make or manage the upgrade. It is where Programmers.io can help you with its staff augmentation services or IBMi services designed to provide businesses with technical resources for their IBMi software needs at an affordable cost.

Conclusion

As outlined above, IBM has made several updates to the Power10 system in 2024 to improve its performance and provide users with greater capabilities to accomplish their objectives. If you’re on the fence about upgrading to IBM Power10 because you’re unsure how to implement the updates, then you can get help from the IBMi programmers provided by Programmers.io.

As part of our IBMi services, we can connect you with IBMi programmers with the knowledge and expertise to transition any business to IBM Power10.