IBM Reveals Jaw-Dropping Power7 System Specs

Posted 02/12/2010 at 1:35pm | by Bart Salisbury

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When you’ve got mountains of data to work through, you need something larger than a teaspoon. IBM’s solution is the Power7 processor--the equivalent  of Krupp’s Bagger 288--which makes the task of deconstructing those mountains of data a whole lot simpler.

The Power7 processor is for server use. It has 1.2 billion transistors, and up to eight cores. Each core can run up to four threads simultaneously, allowing 32 parallel tasks. Each chip comes with 8GB of embedded DRAM per core, which eliminates the need for a separate L3 cache chip. Throughput is four times great than that of the Power6 chip. And, each system can be divided into as many as 1,000 virtual systems running multiple operating systems. (Sorry, Windows is not one of those operating systems.)

As you’d expect, this type of power doesn’t come cheap. An entry level Power 750 Express system costs in the neighborhood of $34,000. No word on what the top-of-the-line Power 780 system costs, but with eight 4.1GHz quad-core units, 2TB of DDR3 RAM, and 24 SSDs, it's pricing won't be for the faint-of-heart.

Image Credit: IBM