IBM Corp is using Kryotech Inc’s chip-cooling technology and other enhancements to wring additional performance from the Symphony CMOS processors which drive its forthcoming S/390 Turbo G5 mainframes. News that a high-end ten-way G5 server will perform 1,040 MIPS versus the 900 MIPS IBM had originally planned is sure to light a fire under Big Blue’s chief mainframe rival Hitachi Ltd. A high-end uniprocessor G5 Turbo engine now performs at 150 MIPS – up from 125 MIPS – the same as Hitachi’s current high-end bi-CMOS Skyline engine which does some 975 MIPS as a ten-way. The standard G5 CPU, formerly set to deliver 115 MIPS, now performs 125 MIPS. The improvement has been achieved in part by raising the 32-bit chips’ clock speed from 465MHz to 500MHz, and by other techniques which IBM wasn’t very specific about, such as more data paths to main memory and increased voltage. One way to increase clock speed is to operate the chip at a lower temperature. IBM eventually admitted it is using NCR Corp spin-out Kryotech’s refrigeration technique as well as technology from computer air conditioning specialist Liebert Corp. West Columbia, South Carolina-based Kryotech – which supercools Alpha, AMD, UltraSparc, Pentium Pro and other chips – is manufacturing the cooling compressor units which are used in G5 while IBM’s own engineering team designed the control unit. Three Model 9672 G5s configured with the 150 MIPS Turbo engine use eight, nine and ten processors and are due to ship in September. The other 12 models use a 125 MIPS engine, previously rated at 115 MIPS. They are due to ship in the third week in August. IBM says it will have a dozen installations by the time the servers are generally available; first sites went live over July 4 weekend. A G5 (Symphony) multichip module (MCM), the core of every new 9672 server, includes twenty-nine separate chips on a 127mm-square multi-chip module: 12 G5 CISC CPUs – each with 256Kb cache – two system controllers; eight 1Mb L2 cache chips; four memory bus adapters; one clock chip; and two cryptographic processors. Ten of the G5 chips can be used as CPUs in an SMP single image system; the two others in the MCM can be either used as hot backup in the event of a chip failure or as 3990-style disk controller (IBM ported the 3990 controller program to the S/390 CMOS chip family during the G4 generation). G5 uses one fifth the electricity and one tenth the glue chips required in IBM’s H5’s bipolar thermal conduction module. Upgrading to the G5 CPU and memory boards from G4 takes around four hours, it claims. IBM said it would not provide list prices for the systems even though the 1956 Consent Decree, which IBM signed to put a stop to an antitrust lawsuit brought against it by the US Department of Justice, is still in effect for the AS/400 and S/390 lines and requires IBM to release list prices for all of the equipment and software it sells under these lines (see separate story). It told us to consult an analyst. Expect prices to be around $6,000 per MIPS for complete G5 systems, down from $7,000 per MIPS for G4 servers, according to analysts. As reported, IBM’s second quarter mainframe business was down 25% on MIPS deliveries that were flat as the customers await G5. IBM’s Wall Street watchers say it already has some 140 customers booked to swap out Hitachi or Amdahl Corp mainframes with G5. IBM’s mainframe hardware business is estimated to be worth some $5bn- $18bn once software, services and maintenance are included. Analysts caution users to beware of costly new software licenses for G5 (see separate story).
