IBM System p
L'IBM System p (precedentemente nota come RS/6000 RISC System/6000) è una serie di server prodotti da IBM e basati su processori RISC e sistemi operativi di tipo UNIX.
Storia
Presentata nel 1990 la serie RS/6000 rimpiazzava la serie RT-PC. La serie nel corso della sua vita ha subito molti cambiamenti di nome. Inizialmente nota come RS/6000 la serie venne rinominata eServer pSeries nel 2000 come parte della line e-Server.
With the advent of the POWER5 processor in 2004 the family was rebranded the eServer p5. Now with the global move of the server and storage brands to the System brand with the Systems Agenda, the family has been renamed yet again to System p5 in 2005. The System p5 now encompasses the IBM OpenPower product line.
Processors
Early RS6000 were based on the IBM POWER and POWER2 processor. After the development of the PowerPC instruction set architecture, many lower end servers and some workstations were based on PowerPC models such as the 603 and 604e. Higher end servers and SP clusters were still based on POWER due to its excellent floating point performance, while the RS64 variant of the PowerPC was developed for commercial based systems where integer processing and throughput are more important.
Recently, after development of the POWER4 processor the RS64 line has been discontinued and the difference between throughput and number crunching optmized systems no longer exists.
Features
All IBM System p5 and IBM eServer p5 machines support DLPAR (Dynamic Logical Partitioning) with Virtual I/O and Micro Partitioning.
System p generally uses the AIX operating system and, more recently, 64-bit versions of the Linux operating system.
Deep Blue
Deep Blue, an RS/6000 based supercomputer, was the first computer system to win a chess game against a reigning world champion (Garry Kasparov) under regular time controls. It is a massively parallel, 30-node, RS/6000, SP-based computer system enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI chess processors. Its chess playing program is written in the C programming language and runs under the AIX operating system. It was capable of evaluating 100,000,000 positions per second.
See also
- Web-based System Manager, an AIX management software
- Dynamic Logical Partitioning
- Linux on Power
- List of IBM products
References
(EN) Denis Howe, IBM System p, in Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. Disponibile con licenza GFDL