Tech giant IBM recently introduced the Power E1080 Server. It’s slated to be the first in a lineup based on the IBM Power10 processor, which was specially designed for hybrid cloud environments. According to IBM, this enables the E1080 to provide improved customer control and seamless hybrid cloud services on the “most secured server platform.” The server is capable of 2.5 times greater per core performance compared to x86-based servers. The company is expecting this solution to address the gap in public cloud technology for a hybrid cloud computing model that can integrate on-premises resources with cloud-based infrastructure.
“When we were designing the E1080, we had to be cognizant of how the pandemic was changing not only consumer behavior, but also our customer’s behavior and needs from their IT infrastructure,” shared Dylan Boday, VP of Product Management for AI and Hybrid Cloud at IBM. “The E1080 is IBM’s first system designed from the silicon up for hybrid cloud environments, a system tailor-built to serve as the foundation for our vision of a dynamic and secure, frictionless hybrid cloud experience.”
When combined with the IBM Power Virtual Server, the new Power10 processer allows servers to efficiently move on-premises applications, including mission-critical workloads, onto the cloud. The E1080 can also be scaled instantly through Power Private Cloud for Dynamic Capacity, IBM’s infrastructure offering which provides users with cloud agility. The Power10 delivers up to 50 percent more performance and scalability than its predecessor while simultaneously reducing energy use.
The Power10 also enables transparent memory encryption which is designed to simplify and support end-to-end security without affecting performance. Compared to the IBM Power9, the latest processor provides accelerated encryption performance with 4 times the number of encryption engines per core. This allows it to deliver 2.5 times faster per core performance for AES encryption compared to the previous generation of IBM Power Servers.
The E1080 is the first on-premises system that will support metering by the minute for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift, therefore extending the capabilities of the IBM Power Virtual Server.
IBM ensures access to a myriad of security control solutions at every level of the system stack, from the foundational hardware including the process and memory to key software such as the operating system, hypervisor, and applications. The IBM PowerVM functions as the E1080’s built-in hypervisor. According to the company, it has significantly fewer Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) compared to most competitive hypervisors indicated in the US Government National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Vulnerabilities Database (NVD).
The E1080 also offers new enterprise AI features for data. The Power10 includes four Matrix Math Accelerator (MMA) engines per core which allow it to increase AI inference by 5 times compared to the previous IBM Power 980 server. Besides hardware, the E1080 also supports bring-your-own model capabilities using IBM Auto-AI as well as other no-code tools.
The Power10 processor was manufactured in partnership with Samsung. It utilizes 7nm EUV process technology, making it the company’s first commercially available 7nm processor.