IBM Power Systems S922, S914, and S924 Technical Overview and Introduction

IBM Power Systems S922, S914, and S924 Technical Overview and Introduction

by Scott Vetter, Young Hoon Cho, Gareth Coates, Bartlomiej Grabowski, Volker Haug
Released August 2022
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: 9780738456935

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Book description

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication is a comprehensive guide that covers the IBM Power System S922 (9009-22A), IBM Power System S914 (9009-41A), and IBM Power System S924 (9009-42A) servers that support IBM AIX®, IBM i, and Linux operating systems. The objective of this paper is to introduce the major innovative Power S914, Power S922, and Power 924 offerings and their relevant functions:


  • The new IBM POWER9™ processor, which is available at frequencies of 2.3 - 3.8 GHz, 2.8 - 3.8 GHz, 2.9 - 3.8 GHz, 3.4 - 3.9 GHz, 3.5 - 3.9 GHz, and 3.8 - 4.0 GHz.
  • Significantly strengthened cores and larger caches.
  • Two integrated memory controllers that double the memory footprint of IBM POWER8® servers.
  • 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 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 IBM Power Systems documentation by providing a desktop reference that offers a detailed technical description of the Power S914, Power S922, and Power S924 systems.

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 Systems overview
      1. 1.1.1 Power S922 server
      2. 1.1.2 Power S914 server
      3. 1.1.3 Power S924 server
      4. 1.1.4 Common features
    2. 1.2 Operating environment
    3. 1.3 Physical package
      1. 1.3.1 Tower model
      2. 1.3.2 Rack-mount model
    4. 1.4 System features
      1. 1.4.1 Power S922 server features
      2. 1.4.2 Power S914 server features
      3. 1.4.3 Power S924 server features
      4. 1.4.4 Minimum features
      5. 1.4.5 Power supply features
      6. 1.4.6 Processor module features
      7. 1.4.7 Memory features
      8. 1.4.8 Peripheral Component Interconnect Express slots
    5. 1.5 Disk and media features
    6. 1.6 I/O drawers for Power S922, Power S914, and Power S924 servers
      1. 1.6.1 PCIe Gen3 I/O expansion drawer
      2. 1.6.2 I/O drawers and usable PCI slots
      3. 1.6.3 EXP24SX (#ESLS) and EXP12SX (#ESLL) SAS Storage Enclosures
    7. 1.7 IBM i Solution Editions for Power S914
    8. 1.8 IBM Capacity BackUp
      1. 1.8.1 Power S922 (9009-22A) IBM Capacity BackUp offering
      2. 1.8.2 Power S914 (9009-41A) IBM Capacity BackUp offering
      3. 1.8.3 Power S924 (9009-42A) IBM Capacity BackUp offering
    9. 1.9 System racks
      1. 1.9.1 IBM 7014 Model T00 rack
      2. 1.9.2 IBM 7014 Model T42 rack
      3. 1.9.3 IBM 42U Slim Rack 7965-94Y
      4. 1.9.4 1.8 Meter Rack (#0551)
      5. 1.9.5 2.0 Meter Rack (#0553)
      6. 1.9.6 Rack (#ER05)
      7. 1.9.7 The AC power distribution unit and rack content
      8. 1.9.8 Rack-mounting rules
      9. 1.9.9 Useful rack additions
      10. 1.9.10 Original equipment manufacturer racks
    10. 1.10 Hardware Management Console
      1. 1.10.1 New features
      2. 1.10.2 Hardware Management Console overview
      3. 1.10.3 Hardware Management Console code level
      4. 1.10.4 Two architectures of Hardware Management Console
      5. 1.10.5 Hardware Management Console connectivity to POWER9 processor-based systems
      6. 1.10.6 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 caching
      8. 2.1.8 Hardware transactional memory
      9. 2.1.9 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 Peripheral Component Interconnect adapters
      1. 2.5.1 Peripheral Component Interconnect 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 (#EJ1C)
      2. 2.6.2 Split backplane option (#EJ1E)
      3. 2.6.3 Backplane (#EJ1D)
      4. 2.6.4 Expanded Function Backplane (#EJ1M)
      5. 2.6.5 NVMe support
      6. 2.6.6 Backplane (#EJ1F)
      7. 2.6.7 Expanded Function Storage Backplane (#EJ1G)
      8. 2.6.8 RAID support
      9. 2.6.9 Easy Tier
      10. 2.6.10 External SAS ports
      11. 2.6.11 Media drawers
      12. 2.6.12 External DVD drives
      13. 2.6.13 RDX removable disk drives
    7. 2.7 External IO subsystems
      1. 2.7.1 Peripheral Component Interconnect Express 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 SAS Storage Enclosure and EXP12SX SAS Storage Enclosure
      2. 2.8.2 IBM Storage
    9. 2.9 Operating system support
      1. 2.9.1 AIX operating system
      2. 2.9.2 IBM i
      3. 2.9.3 Linux operating system
      4. 2.9.4 Virtual I/O Server
    10. 2.10 POWER9 reliability, availability, and serviceability capabilities
    11. 2.11 Manageability
      1. 2.11.1 Service user interfaces
      2. 2.11.2 IBM Power Systems Firmware maintenance
      3. 2.11.3 Concurrent firmware maintenance improvements
      4. 2.11.4 Electronic Services and Electronic Service Agent
  6. Chapter 3. Virtualization
    1. 3.1 POWER9 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 Active Memory Expansion
    4. 3.4 Single Root I/O Virtualization
    5. 3.5 PowerVM
      1. 3.5.1 Multiple shared processor pools
      2. 3.5.2 Virtual I/O Server
      3. 3.5.3 Live Partition Mobility
      4. 3.5.4 Active Memory Sharing
      5. 3.5.5 Active Memory Deduplication
      6. 3.5.6 Remote Restart
  7. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Online resources
    3. Help from IBM
  8. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: IBM Power Systems S922, S914, and S924 Technical Overview and Introduction
  • Author(s): Scott Vetter, Young Hoon Cho, Gareth Coates, Bartlomiej Grabowski, Volker Haug
  • Release date: August 2022
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: 9780738456935