IBM System p

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The System p, formerly known as RS/6000 (for RISC System/6000), is IBM's current RISC/UNIX-based server and workstation product line.

1 History
- 1.1 Deep Blue
2 Processors
3 Features
4 Current models
5 Discontinued models
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

Announced in 1990, the RS/6000 replaced the RT PC. This server family has undergone several name changes in its lifetime. It was originally a line of workstations and servers called RS/6000. The server line was then renamed to the eServer pSeries in 2000 as part of its e-Server branding initiative. 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. With the introduction of POWER6 processor models the new models are now being released under the System p brand, dropping the p5 designation.

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. Deep Blue was capable of evaluating 200,000,000 positions per second.

Early RS/6000s were based on the IBM POWER and POWER2 processor. After the development of the PowerPC ISA, many lower end servers and some workstations were based on PowerPC models such as the PowerPC 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 commercially-based systems where integer processing and throughput are more important.

After developing the POWER4 processor the RS64 line was discontinued and the difference between throughput and number crunching optimized systems no longer exists. Nowadays System p machines mainly use the POWER5+ but also PowerPC 970 on for the low end and blade systems.

Newly introduced systems in 2007 use the POWER6 processor, such as the POWER6 based System p 570 and the JS22 blade. In addition IBM introduced during the SuperComputing 2007 (SC07) conference in Reno a new POWER6 based System p 575 with 32 POWER6 cores at 4.7GHz and up to 256GB of RAM with water cooling.

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. Sun Microsystems is also developing OpenSolaris port, currently experimental^[1].