The first details about the processor Power7 +

IBM at the Hot Chips conference spoke about the new IBM Power7 + RISC processor being developed for the new generation of servers.

What is this beast?

The eight-core IBM Power7 processor is manufactured with a design rate of 32 nm. And this is a big step forward when compared with the previous IBM Power7 processor, for which the 45nm manufacturing process was used. The new production technology will allow to realize a number of additional features in silicon, more about them later.

Power7 + series solutions now have 80 MB of L3 cache (with 32 MB in Power7). As the IBM representatives pointed out at the presentations, increasing the amount of memory provides a significant increase in productivity.

The new processor from IBM uses a memory called eDRAM (embedded DRAM). If you compare the SRAM with the new memory, you get the difference in the number of transistors per bit more than twice. Power7 + contains 2.1 billion transistors using SRAM memory, they would need 5.4 billion. Thus, using the eDRAM in a new processor allows the chip to fit more without increasing its size.
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Another feature of the process is that IBM has included additional accelerators in Power7 + to speed up data encryption and other security tasks. The chip implements a feature that at IBM is called a “truly random number generator”. The generator is able to protect against hacking by the method of predicting the next “random” number in the sequence.

In Power7 +, a dual processor module is implemented, thanks to which it will be possible to install two processors in one socket. Innovation will allow customers to save on software licenses, which are calculated based on the number of sockets.


The evolution of IBM Power processors. Power7 processors were released in 2010. Power7 + release is expected soon.

In addition to servers and blade servers, based on Power7 built such well-known supercomputers, like Blue Waters and IBM Watson . I wonder what will happen next :)