IBM Power System E950: Technical Overview and Introduction

IBM Power System E950: Technical Overview and Introduction

by Scott Vetter, James Cruickshank, Volker Haug, Yongsheng Li, Armin Röll
Released December 2019
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: 9780738457093

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Book description

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication gives a broad understanding of a new architecture of the IBM Power System E950 (9040-MR9) server that supports IBM AIX®, and Linux operating systems. The objective of this paper is to introduce the major innovative Power E950 offerings and relevant functions:


  • The IBM POWER9™ processor, which is available at frequencies of 2.8 - 3.4 GHz.
  • Significantly strengthened cores and larger caches.
  • Supports up to 16 TB of memory, which is four times more than the IBM POWER8® processor-based IBM Power System E850 server.
  • Integrated I/O subsystem and hot-pluggable Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) Gen4 slots, which have double the bandwidth of Gen3 I/O slots.
  • Supports EXP12SX and ESP24SX external disk drawers, which have 12 Gb Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interfaces and support Active Optical Cables (AOCs) for greater distances and less cable bulk.
  • New IBM EnergyScale™ technology offers 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 Power Systems documentation by providing a desktop reference that offers a detailed technical description of the Power E950 server.

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 System overview
    2. 1.2 Operating environment
    3. 1.3 Physical package
    4. 1.4 System features
      1. 1.4.1 Minimum configuration
      2. 1.4.2 Power supply features
      3. 1.4.3 Processor module features
      4. 1.4.4 Memory features
      5. 1.4.5 PCIe slots
      6. 1.4.6 USB
      7. 1.4.7 Disk and media features
    5. 1.5 I/O drawers
      1. 1.5.1 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion Drawer
      2. 1.5.2 I/O drawers and usable PCI slots
      3. 1.5.3 EXP24SX and EXP12SX SAS Storage Enclosures
    6. 1.6 System racks
      1. 1.6.1 New racks
      2. 1.6.2 IBM Enterprise 42U Slim Rack 7965-S42
      3. 1.6.3 IBM 7014 Model T42 rack
      4. 1.6.4 1.8 Meter Rack (#0551)
      5. 1.6.5 2.0 Meter Rack (#0553)
      6. 1.6.6 Rack (#ER05)
      7. 1.6.7 The AC power distribution unit and rack content
      8. 1.6.8 Rack-mounting rules
      9. 1.6.9 Useful rack additions
      10. 1.6.10 Original equipment manufacturer racks
    7. 1.7 Hardware Management Console
      1. 1.7.1 New features of the Hardware Management Console
      2. 1.7.2 Hardware Management Console overview
      3. 1.7.3 Hardware Management Console code level
      4. 1.7.4 Two architectures of Hardware Management Console
      5. 1.7.5 Connectivity to POWER9 processor-based systems
      6. 1.7.6 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 core
      3. 2.1.3 Simultaneous multithreading
      4. 2.1.4 POWER9 compatibility modes
      5. 2.1.5 Processor feature codes
      6. 2.1.6 Memory access
      7. 2.1.7 On-chip L3 cache innovation and intelligent caching
      8. 2.1.8 Hardware transactional memory
      9. 2.1.9 POWER9 accelerator processor interfaces
      10. 2.1.10 Power and performance management
      11. 2.1.11 Comparison of the POWER9, POWER8, and POWER7+ processors
    2. 2.2 Memory subsystem
      1. 2.2.1 DIMM memory riser card
      2. 2.2.2 Memory placement rules
      3. 2.2.3 Memory activations
      4. 2.2.4 Memory throughput
      5. 2.2.5 Active Memory Mirroring
      6. 2.2.6 Memory error correction and recovery
      7. 2.2.7 Special Uncorrectable Error handling
    3. 2.3 Capacity on Demand
      1. 2.3.1 Capacity on Demand: New features
      2. 2.3.2 Capacity Upgrade on Demand
      3. 2.3.3 Processor activations
      4. 2.3.4 Elastic Capacity on Demand (Temporary)
      5. 2.3.5 Utility Capacity on Demand
      6. 2.3.6 Trial Capacity on Demand
      7. 2.3.7 Software licensing and CoD
      8. 2.3.8 Solution Edition for Healthcare
    4. 2.4 System buses
      1. 2.4.1 PCIe Gen4
    5. 2.5 PCIe adapters
      1. 2.5.1 New PCIe adapter features
      2. 2.5.2 PCIe
      3. 2.5.3 LAN adapters
      4. 2.5.4 Graphics adapters
      5. 2.5.5 SAS adapters
      6. 2.5.6 Fibre Channel adapters
      7. 2.5.7 ASYNC adapters
      8. 2.5.8 USB ports
      9. 2.5.9 InfiniBand host channel adapters
      10. 2.5.10 Cryptographic Coprocessor
    6. 2.6 Internal storage
      1. 2.6.1 Backplane features
      2. 2.6.2 Internal NVMe SSD drives
      3. 2.6.3 Supported RAID functions
      4. 2.6.4 Easy Tier
      5. 2.6.5 Media drawers
      6. 2.6.6 External DVD drives
      7. 2.6.7 RDX removable disk drives
    7. 2.7 External I/O subsystems
      1. 2.7.1 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion Drawer
      2. 2.7.2 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion Drawer optical cabling
      3. 2.7.3 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion Drawer system power control network cabling
    8. 2.8 External disk subsystems
      1. 2.8.1 EXP24SX and EXP12SX SAS Storage Enclosure
      2. 2.8.2 IBM System Storage
    9. 2.9 Operating system support
      1. 2.9.1 AIX operating system
      2. 2.9.2 Linux operating system
      3. 2.9.3 Virtual I/O Server
  6. Chapter 3. Virtualization
    1. 3.1 IBM POWER Hypervisor
      1. 3.1.1 POWER processor modes
    2. 3.2 Active Memory Expansion
    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. Chapter 4. Reliability, availability, serviceability, and manageability
    1. 4.1 Power E950 specific RAS enhancements
    2. 4.2 Reliability
      1. 4.2.1 Designed for reliability
      2. 4.2.2 Placement of components
    3. 4.3 Processor RAS details
      1. 4.3.1 Correctable error introduction
      2. 4.3.2 Uncorrectable error introduction
      3. 4.3.3 Processor core/cache error handling
      4. 4.3.4 Cache uncorrectable error handling
      5. 4.3.5 Cyclic redundancy check and lane repair for processor fabric buses
      6. 4.3.6 Processor instruction retry and other try again techniques
      7. 4.3.7 Predictive processor deallocation
      8. 4.3.8 Core-contained checkstops and PowerVM handled errors
      9. 4.3.9 PCIe controller and enhanced error handling
      10. 4.3.10 Memory channel checkstops and hypervisor memory mirroring
      11. 4.3.11 Persistent guarding of failed elements
    4. 4.4 Memory RAS details
    5. 4.5 PCIe I/O subsystem RAS details
      1. 4.5.1 I/O subsystem availability and enhanced error handling
      2. 4.5.2 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion drawer RAS
    6. 4.6 Enterprise systems availability
    7. 4.7 Availability effects of a solution architecture
      1. 4.7.1 Clustering
      2. 4.7.2 Virtual I/O redundancy configurations
      3. 4.7.3 PowerVM Live Partition Mobility
    8. 4.8 Serviceability
      1. 4.8.1 Detecting errors
      2. 4.8.2 Error checkers, fault isolation registers, and first failure data capture
      3. 4.8.3 Service processor
      4. 4.8.4 Diagnosing
      5. 4.8.5 Reporting
      6. 4.8.6 Notifying
      7. 4.8.7 Locating and servicing
    9. 4.9 Manageability
      1. 4.9.1 Service user interfaces
      2. 4.9.2 Power Systems Firmware maintenance
      3. 4.9.3 Concurrent firmware maintenance improvements
      4. 4.9.4 Electronic Services and Electronic Service Agent
    10. 4.10 Selected POWER9 RAS capabilities by operating system
  8. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Online resources
    3. Help from IBM
  9. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: IBM Power System E950: Technical Overview and Introduction
  • Author(s): Scott Vetter, James Cruickshank, Volker Haug, Yongsheng Li, Armin Röll
  • Release date: December 2019
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: 9780738457093