IBM Power System L922 Technical Overview and Introduction

Book description

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication is a comprehensive guide covering the IBM Power System L922 (9008-22L) server, which was designed for data-intensive workloads such as databases and analytics in the Linux operating system. The objective of this paper is to introduce the major innovative Power L922 offering and its relevant functions:


  • The new IBM POWER9™ processor, available at frequencies of 2.7 - 3.8 GHz, 2.9 - 3.8 GHz, and 3.4 - 3.9 GHz.
  • Significantly strengthened cores and larger caches.
  • Two integrated memory controllers that allow double the memory footprint of IBM POWER8® processor-based servers.
  • An integrated I/O subsystem and hot-pluggable Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) Gen4 and Gen3 I/O slots.
  • I/O drawer expansion options offer greater flexibility.
  • Support for Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI) 2.0.
  • New feature IBM EnergyScale™ technology provides new variable processor frequency modes that provide a significant performance boost beyond the static nominal frequency.

This publication is for professionals who want to acquire a better understanding of IBM Power Systems™ products. The intended audience includes the following roles:

  • Clients
  • Sales and marketing professionals
  • Technical support professionals
  • IBM Business Partners
  • Independent software vendors (ISVs)

This paper expands the current set of IBM Power Systems documentation by providing a desktop reference that offers a detailed technical description of the Power L922 system.

This paper does not replace the current marketing materials and configuration tools. It is intended as an extra source of information that, together with existing sources, can be used to enhance your knowledge of IBM server solutions.

Table of contents

  1. Front cover
  2. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  3. Preface
    1. Authors
    2. Now you can become a published author, too!
    3. Comments welcome
    4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
  4. Chapter 1. General description
    1. 1.1 Power L922 system overview
      1. 1.1.1 The operator panel
    2. 1.2 Operating environment
    3. 1.3 Physical package
    4. 1.4 Server features
      1. 1.4.1 Power L922 server features
      2. 1.4.2 Minimum features
      3. 1.4.3 Power supply features
    5. 1.5 Power L922 processor modules
      1. 1.5.1 Memory features
      2. 1.5.2 PCIe slots
    6. 1.6 Disk and media features
    7. 1.7 I/O drawers for the Power L922 server
      1. 1.7.1 PCIe3 I/O expansion drawer
      2. 1.7.2 I/O drawers and usable PCI slot
      3. 1.7.3 EXP24SX SAS Storage Enclosure (#ELLS) and EXP12SX SAS Storage Enclosure (#ELLL)
    8. 1.8 System racks
      1. 1.8.1 IBM 7014 Model T00 rack
      2. 1.8.2 IBM 7014 Model T42 rack
      3. 1.8.3 IBM 42U Slim Rack 7965-94Y
      4. 1.8.4 #0551
      5. 1.8.5 #0553
      6. 1.8.6 #ER05
      7. 1.8.7 The AC power distribution unit and rack content
      8. 1.8.8 Rack-mounting rules
      9. 1.8.9 Useful rack additions
      10. 1.8.10 Original equipment manufacturer rack
    9. 1.9 Hardware Management Console
      1. 1.9.1 New features
      2. 1.9.2 Hardware Management Console overview
      3. 1.9.3 Hardware Management Console code level
      4. 1.9.4 Two architectures of Hardware Management Console
      5. 1.9.5 Hardware Management Console connectivity to POWER9 processor-based systems’ service processors
      6. 1.9.6 High availability Hardware Management Console configuration
  5. Chapter 2. Architecture and technical overview
    1. 2.1 The IBM POWER9 processor
      1. 2.1.1 POWER9 processor overview
      2. 2.1.2 POWER9 processor features
      3. 2.1.3 POWER9 processor core
      4. 2.1.4 Simultaneous multithreading
      5. 2.1.5 Processor feature codes
      6. 2.1.6 Memory access
      7. 2.1.7 On-chip L3 cache innovation and Intelligent Cache
      8. 2.1.8 Hardware transactional memory
      9. 2.1.9 IBM Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface 2.0
      10. 2.1.10 Power management and system performance
      11. 2.1.11 Comparison of the POWER9, POWER8, and POWER7+ processors
    2. 2.2 Memory subsystem
      1. 2.2.1 Memory placement rules
      2. 2.2.2 Memory bandwidth
    3. 2.3 System bus
    4. 2.4 Internal I/O subsystem
      1. 2.4.1 Slot configuration
      2. 2.4.2 System ports
    5. 2.5 PCIe adapters
      1. 2.5.1 PCI Express
      2. 2.5.2 LAN adapters
      3. 2.5.3 Graphics accelerator adapters
      4. 2.5.4 SAS adapters
      5. 2.5.5 Fibre Channel adapters
      6. 2.5.6 InfiniBand host channel adapter
      7. 2.5.7 Cryptographic coprocessor
      8. 2.5.8 Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface adapters
      9. 2.5.9 USB adapters
    6. 2.6 Internal storage
      1. 2.6.1 Backplane (#EL66)
      2. 2.6.2 Split backplane option (#EL68)
      3. 2.6.3 NVMe support
      4. 2.6.4 RAID support
      5. 2.6.5 Easy Tier
    7. 2.7 External IO subsystems
      1. 2.7.1 PCIe3 I/O expansion drawer
      2. 2.7.2 PCIe3 I/O expansion drawer optical cabling
      3. 2.7.3 PCIe3 I/O expansion drawer system power control network cabling
    8. 2.8 External disk subsystems
      1. 2.8.1 EXP24SX SAS Storage Enclosure and EXP12SX SAS Storage Enclosure
      2. 2.8.2 IBM Storage
    9. 2.9 Operating system support
      1. 2.9.1 Linux operating system
    10. 2.10 POWER9 reliability, availability, and serviceability capabilities by operating system
  6. Chapter 3. Virtualization
    1. 3.1 POWER Hypervisor
      1. 3.1.1 Virtual SCSI
      2. 3.1.2 Virtual Ethernet
      3. 3.1.3 Virtual Fibre Channel
      4. 3.1.4 Virtual (TTY) console
    2. 3.2 POWER processor modes
    3. 3.3 Single Root I/O Virtualization
    4. 3.4 PowerVM
      1. 3.4.1 Multiple shared processor pools
      2. 3.4.2 Virtual I/O Server
      3. 3.4.3 Live Partition Mobility
      4. 3.4.4 Active Memory Sharing
      5. 3.4.5 Active Memory Deduplication
      6. 3.4.6 Remote Restart
  7. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Online resources
    3. Help from IBM
  8. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: IBM Power System L922 Technical Overview and Introduction
  • Author(s): Scott Vetter, Young Hoon Cho, Gareth Coates, Bartlomiej Grabowski, Volker Haug
  • Release date: December 2019
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: 9780738456980