IBM 755 - Manual (Page 2)

IBM United States Hardware Announcement
110-008
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physics, and petroleum reservoir modeling that require highly intense computations
where the workload is aligned with parallel processing methodologies.
The Power 755 server (8236-E8C) is a 3.3 GHz 32-core POWER7 server that should
be very popular in HPC environments such as weather and climate modeling,
computational chemistry, physics, computer-aided engineering, computational fluid
dynamics, and petroleum reservoir modeling. A single Power 755 provides four 64-
bit, eight-core processor POWER7 modules with 4 MB of L3 cache/core and 256 KB
of L2 cache/core. Each module is packaged on its own processor card, which has
eight DDR3 DIMM slots offering a maximum of 256 GB memory when all 32 DIMM
slots are filled with 8 GB DIMMs. The memory DIMMs run at 1066 MHz.
Using 12X InfiniBand adapters, up to 64 Power 755 nodes, each with 32 cores, can
be clustered together, providing up to 2,048 POWER7 cores. The IBM HPC software
stack provides the necessary development tools, libraries, and system management
software necessary to manage a Power 755 server cluster.
The Power 755 system unit provides up to five PCI slots, one GX slot for a 12X
adapter, eight SFF (small form factor) SAS bays, and a DVD-RAM. Three of the five
PCI slots are PCIe 8x and two are PCI-X DDR. The GX slot can hold a 12X InfiniBand
adapter supporting 4x connection to other Power 755s. The eight SAS bays contain
a minimum of two and a maximum of eight disks or SSDs, providing up to 2.4 TB
storage capacity. Up to an 156 additional SAS bays are available using the EXP12S
SAS disk/SSD drawer (#5886), providing up to 70 TB of additional capacity. All
drives are direct dock and hot pluggable.
The Power 755 system unit also provides a choice of quad gigabit or dual 10 Gb
integrated host Ethernet adapters, which can be extensively virtualized. These ports
are selected at the time of initial order and do not use a PCI slot.
The Power 755 server contains a minimum of two and a maximum of either eight
SFF SAS disks or eight SFF SAS SSDs. The maximum internal disk storage available
is 2400 GB. All DASD are direct dock and hot pluggable. A slim media bay is
available for a mandatory SATA DVD-RAM.
Also available in the Power 755 system unit is a choice of quad gigabit or dual 10 Gb
integrated host Ethernet adapters. These native ports can be selected at the time of
initial order. Virtualization of these integrated Ethernet adapters is supported.
Other integrated features include:
• Service Processor
• Integrated SAS/SATA controller for disk/SSD/DVD in system unit
• EnergyScale technology
• Two system ports and three USB ports
• Two HMC ports and two SPCN ports
• Redundant and hot-swap power and cooling
• 4U 19-inch rack-mount packaging
Key prerequisites
If installing the AIX® operating system (one of these):
• AIX Version 6.1 with the 6100-04 Technology Level and Service Pack 2, or later
• AIX Version 6.1 with the 6100-03 Technology Level and Service Pack 5, or later
(planned availability: June 25, 2010)
• AIX Version 6.1 with the 6100-02 Technology Level and Service Pack 8, or later
(planned availability: June 25, 2010)
• AIX Version 5.3 with the 5300-11 Technology Level and Service Pack 2, or later
(planned availability: March 16, 2010)