IBM eServer p690

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Success in today's e-business world requires that companies react immediately—on demand—to any shift in the competitive environment. Clients expect instantaneous adaptation to changing market conditions, which means that companies can no longer afford to wait for their IT infrastructure to catch up to their strategy. Needed is the agility to scale at a moment's notice with unprecedented power and performance from every component. And to support it all, companies need mainframe-level reliability features designed to ensure that applications and data are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

As the flagship system of the IBM eServer® pSeries® product line, the pSeries 690—a highly advanced server that can help lower costs, improve efficiency and speed transformation to e-business—is the gold standard for UNIX® computing in the on demand world. Through leading-edge innovations such as high-performance microprocessors, dense packaging, advanced clustering techniques and mainframe-inspired reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features, the pSeries 690 helps deliver top power, flexibility and reliability to simplify your computing infrastructure.

Features such as dynamic logical partitioning (LPAR) and flexible Capacity on Demand (CoD) capabilities contribute to strong pSeries 690 performance while preserving operational versatility. In addition, innovative self-managing RAS features help to drive down costs and complexity by lowering administrative overhead. Combining the most advanced IBM leadership technology for enterprise-class performance and flexible adaptation to changing market conditions, the pSeries 690 delivers the key capabilities businesses need to compete in today's e-business on demand™ environment.

The pSeries 690 is the ultimate high-end IBM UNIX server. Designed to provide datacenter-class capacity, performance and RAS, the POWER4+™ microprocessors in the pSeries 690 utilize "SMP-on-a-chip" design. At 1.50GHz, 1.70GHz and 1.90GHz, these processors are among the fastest 64-bit chips in the world1. Because they also incorporate copper and silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, POWER4+ processors consume less power—saving energy while delivering high reliability and outstanding performance. Clients with an existing POWER4™ pSeries 690 system can upgrade to a POWER4+ configuration to boost application speed and throughput.
Innovative CPU packaging also contributes to enterprise-class performance and reliability in the p690. Advanced Multichip Modules (MCMs), similar to the design used in IBM eServer zSeries® servers, places up to eight microprocessors in a single MCM so small that it can fit in the palm of your hand. To further enhance performance, 128MB of Level 3 (L3) cache is packaged with the MCM. L3 cache helps stage information more effectively from processor memory to application programs. By decreasing the physical distance between components, MCMs enable faster movement of information—resulting in greater speed and improved reliability compared with earlier, less dense component configurations.

Additional "book" packaging for memory also enhances reliability by helping to protect components from electrostatic discharge and physical damage. With space for up to eight memory books per server, the pSeries 690 offers up to a 32-way configuration with 8GB to 1024GB of total memory—providing tremendous enterprise-class processing power and capacity for both commercial and technical workloads.

Designed to support the incredible speed of the processors, pSeries 690 architecture also features a peak aggregate memory to L3 cache bandwidth of 204.8GB per second in a 32-way configuration. In addition, the system can deliver an aggregate I/O subsystem bandwidth of up to 44GB/second. With its unique system architecture, the pSeries 690 can offer the speed and power to deliver efficient, cost-effective data sharing and application throughput.