In addition, the new systems enable clients to manage current applications and services at less cost with technology breakthroughs in virtualization, energy savings, more cost-efficient use of memory, and better price performance.

IBM's new POWER7 systems, which build on the company's 12-point revenue share gains since 2004 in the $14 billion UNIX market, can manage millions of transactions in real time and analyze the associated volumes of data typical of emerging applications. A smart electrical grid requires per-the-minute data to deliver electricity where it is needed most, in real time, while helping customers monitor their energy consumption in real time to avoid or reduce usage during the most expensive peaks each day.  A major U.S. utility moving to a smart grid pilot is moving from processing less than one million meter reads per day in a traditional grid, to more than 85 million reads per day in a smart grid.  The utility needs to collect, analyze, and present all that information to its nearly five million customers in real time versus the overnight batch processing of a traditional electrical grid which delivers monthly billing statements.

For example, eMeter, a leading maker of software that runs e-grids, uses IBM Power Systems to process the extreme amount of data that comes in from millions of smart meters while analyzing that information on the fly. In Canada, operators of Ontario's grid -- the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) -- which provides centralized metering services for more than 90 utility companies within Ontario Province, uses eMeter software on IBM Power Systems to process hourly power consumption data from all residential customers and plans soon to move to 15-minute data for large commercial users across the province in the near future.

"eMeter ran a successful benchmark on IBM POWER6 systems for more than 20 million smart meters -- more than four-times scale of any other utilities industry benchmark," said Scott Smith, client business manager, eMeter. "We know that there are already markets in the world that are scaling significantly. Combining eMeter and IBM's POWER7 we are confident we can hit much higher numbers to meet their needs."

POWER7 systems can also offer industry-leading return on investment though dramatic improvements in price/performance, energy savings and virtualization for server consolidation. The new systems can deliver four times the performance and four times the virtualization capability for the same price -- and are three to four times more energy efficient. Additionally, the total cost of acquisition and ownership can be better than competitive systems.  For instance, the new IBM Power 750 Express currently delivers 71 percent better price for performance than Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server and more than 280 percent better than Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 and M4000 servers. And the IBM Power 750 Express delivers more than 400 percent better price for performance than the HP Integrity rx7640 or the rx6600 servers.
 Four New Power Systems

 The new systems and management software include:

 --  IBM Power 780, a  new category of scalable, high-end servers,
     featuring an advanced modular design with up to 64 POWER7 "cores," or
     CPUs, and the new TurboCore workload optimizing mode. TurboCore
     can deliver up to two-times the performance per core of POWER6
     processor-based systems, providing excellent ROI for applications
     with high per-core performance requirements, such as managing and
     analyzing transactions from a smart electrical grid.
 --  IBM Power 770, a modular enterprise system with up to 64 POWER7 cores,
     featuring higher performance per core than POWER6 processors and
     using up to 70 percent less energy for the same number of cores as the
     IBM Power 570.
 --  IBM Power 755, a high-performance computing cluster node with 32
     POWER7 cores, Energy Star qualified for energy efficiency, and
     optimized for the most challenging analytic workloads.
  --  IBM Power 750 Express, an Energy Star qualified business server for
     mid-market clients offering four times the processing capacity of its
     predecessor, the IBM Power 550 Express, in the same energy
     envelope and 10 times the performance of a comparable HP Integrity
     rx6600. The Power 750 is three times more energy efficient than
     the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440, Sun's self-proclaimed "Coolthreads"
     server.
  --  IBM Systems Director Express, Standard and Enterprise Editions, which
     offer new and greatly simplified packaging of management software for
     the new systems and include the advanced virtualization management
     capabilities of VMControl. VMControl allows a "systems pool" of
     multiple Power servers to be managed as one entity, which can enable
     reductions in management cost and complexity.

The Power 750 Express and 755  planned volume ship date is February 19 and the Power 770 and 780  planned volume availability is March 16. The IBM Systems Director Editions, supporting both POWER7 and POWER6 models, planned availability is March 5.

Systems Optimized for Workload Performance and Maximum ROI

IBM has vastly increased the parallel processing capabilities of POWER7 systems -- integrated across hardware and software -- a key requirement for managing millions of concurrent transactions. As expected, the new Power Systems continue the history of IBM industry-leading transaction processing speed, optimized for database workloads, and also deliver a leap forward to "throughput" computing, optimized for running massive Internet workloads.

These two computing methods, combined with superior analytics capabilities, are ideal for emerging business models where large amounts of data from sensors in electric grids, roads, or the supply chain, for example, can be connected to pools of POWER7 systems optimized for Internet workloads, then analyzed with analytics systems.  The three modes -- massive parallel processing, "throughput" computing, and analytics capabilities -- are all integrated and managed consistently with IBM Systems Director software.  The overall system can then manage other systems, storage and networking not only on POWER6 and POWER7 systems but also on IBM mainframes and x86-based System x servers -- providing a complete management framework including the advanced virtualization management of VMControl.

IBM also dramatically increased the parallel processing capabilities of its middleware software, such as WebSphere, DB2, InfoSphere Warehouse and Cognos for managing Internet, data, transactions, and analytics to support POWER7 systems  -- with no need for clients or application providers to rewrite existing applications to exploit POWER7 advanced technologies.

Innovative, Workload-Optimized Features

To manage the demands of emerging applications, and better manage traditional applications, the new POWER7 systems -- comprised of innovative and integrated hardware and software -- are designed with workload-optimizing technologies, such as:

 --  Faster cores and more throughput to manage massively parallel
     transactions: POWER7 systems use more "cores," or CPUs, and add more
     "threads," or virtual "cores", which are resources that manage
     computational tasks, per chip: Each new POWER7 processor or "chip" can
     now run 32 simultaneous tasks - with eight cores and four threads per
     core -- quadruple the maximum number of cores of POWER6 systems and
     eight-times the number of threads per chip as POWER6. IBM Power
     Systems then automatically engage those cores and threads in various
     modes depending upon the workload to maximize overall performance.
  --  TurboCore mode, which is highly optimized for database or other
     transaction-oriented workloads, does this by running with four cores
     active and putting most of the resources from all eight cores on the
     chip behind just the four active cores giving them more cache memory
     and memory bandwidth, and allowing the clock speed to be increased,
     driving significant per core performance gains. TurboCore mode can
     maximize the ROI from software by potentially reducing software costs
     in half for those applications that are licensed per core, while
     increasing per core performance from that software. Select models will
     support TurboCore mode, such as the Power 780 being announced today.
  --  When not in TurboCore mode, all POWER7 processors are in MaxCore

     mode with up to 8-cores per socket and 4-threads per core - 32 threads
     total.  With eight times the simultaneous threads executing per
     "chip", POWER7 is well suited for Internet-based workloads with many
     tasks coming in simultaneously that benefit from being run in
     parallel. For example, an energy company presenting smart meter data
     to its clients on the Web might connect a system pool of POWER7
     servers to its Internet-connected meters.
 --  POWER7 technology features "Intelligent Threads" that can dynamically
     vary based on workload demand.  With more threads, POWER7 can deliver
     more total capacity as more tasks are accomplished in parallel, such
     as monitoring the energy usage of millions of households by the minute
     in a smart grid.  With fewer threads, those workloads that need very
     fast individual processing -- such as real-time analytics or database
     transactions -- can get the performance they need for maximum benefit.
     Intelligent Threads work on all POWER7 processors and can effectively
     increase capacity and total performance gains.
 --  For workloads that require large amounts of memory, or in virtualized
     environments where more memory is very beneficial, clients can utilize
     a new POWER7 technology, Active Memory Expansion, a unique
     capability  that uses memory compression technology to make the
     physical memory on the system appear to the application as if it were
     up to twice as large as it actually is. Active Memory Expansion
     technology dynamically adjusts the amount of compressed memory based
     on a workload's memory needs, transparently compressing more data to
     be placed into memory and thus expanding the memory capacity of POWER7
     systems. For example, without installing any more physical memory,
     using Active Memory Expansion, the system can be configured such that
     an SAP application thinks there is 50 percent more physical memory on
     the system than is actually installed. IBM estimates up to a 65
     percent increase in transactions or users could be handled by the same
     server previously constrained by memory capacity.
 --  IBM's WebSphere Application Server and DB2 database have been designed
     to exploit the capabilities of POWER7 systems with no need to rewrite
     existing applications. For example, WebSphere will be able to exploit
     all 32 threads available in a single 8-core POWER7 microprocessor,
     resulting in performance gains of nearly 73 percent over
     competitive application servers on Nehalem.  Performance for DB2
     software for managing enormous amounts of transaction-driven data, has
     also been increased to match the new capabilities of POWER7, further
     improving the scalability advantage of DB2 pureScale on POWER over
     Oracle RAC on Nehalem. Lotus Domino running on POWER7 supports 40,000
     users at 40 percent of the cost of Microsoft Exchange on Nehalem.
     According to IBM Business Partner Oxford International, a leading
     provider of enterprise modernization solutions, new IBM Rational
     application development and management software for POWER7 is
     providing improvements of up to 30 percent in team productivity in all
     aspects of the development process.
 --  IBM's POWER7 systems are designed to make dramatically better use of
     energy.   Unique Intelligent Energy technology allows customers to
     power on and off various parts of the system or to dynamically
     increase or decrease processor clock speeds based on thermal
     conditions and system utilization, on a single server or across a pool
     of multiple servers. POWER7 energy management technologies are
     integrated from its processor, to firmware, PowerVM virtualization,
     operating system support, and up to IBM Active Energy Manager
     software, included in the new IBM Systems Director Standard and
     Enterprise Editions.  As a result, the system dynamically balances
     between energy usage and performance and systems utilization based on
     policy. The result is improved performance per watt -- more than
     two-times better than similar Intel x86-based systems, four times
     better than Sun SPARC servers and eight times better than similar HP
     Itanium-based servers.
 --  POWER7 systems feature industry-leading virtualization -- supporting
     1,000 virtual servers or "partitions" on a single system -- over four
     times as many as on POWER6 systems  -- to help reduce costs by
     consolidating systems and enabling clients to drive to 90 percent
     utilization using IBM PowerVM virtualization software. In effect,
     this enables a single bigger server to do the work of up to a thousand
     smaller servers while dynamically load balancing across them all,
     which can increase ROI, performance and utilization of the virtualized
     servers.

IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing arm of IBM can help new and existing Power Systems users step up to the new POWER7 technology with flexible financing offerings that  include the upgrade, take-out and disposal of existing leased and owned servers regardless of manufacturer. For more information, visit: http://www.ibm.com/financing/us/lifecycle/manage/migration/index.