IBM has added to its System p family of servers with new and enhanced products based on the latest implementation of its Power5+ Quad Core Module (QCM) technology, introduced last year.
QCM sees two dual-core Power5+ processors combined together to create a package that can be plugged into a single socket. Not quite the equivalent of the on-die technologies to be employed in forthcoming multi-core AMD and Intel chips it nonetheless enables Big Blue to lay claim to being the only vendor offering quad-core at present, well ahead of its rivals.
Four new or upgraded System p5 Express servers have been announced all using the latest 1.65GHz Quad Core Modules and priced to compete with x86 servers in the small to medium business sector, starting with the all new System p5 505Q Express. Delivered in a compact 1U rack mount format, the 505Q features a single QCM socket and is aimed at companies looking for a powerful platform for infrastructure consolidation.
The others are all based on existing products. The 510Q Express is a 2U server, again with a single socket, for application consolidation while the 4U 520Q Express has a similar specification but with more internal storage for distributed database and branch office deployment.
Top of the heap comes the 550Q Express, also 4U, but with two sockets enabling it to support up to eight processor cores.
The Power5+ proceesor is supported by IBM AIX plus Red Hat and SUSE Enterprise Linux. All support IBM's Advanced Power Virtualisation (APV) and can be used with the Integrated Virtualisation Manager, a web-based tool used to setup and manage the virtualisation features.
