The Inevitable Power9 Hardware Withdrawals Begin
May 15, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
The high end Power10 machine, the Power E1080, has been out since September 2021 and the rest of the Power10 line was announced in July 2022, so the writing was on the wall for any Power9-based machines the minute that happened.
The ability for IBM to get, much less sell, Power9 chips even if it wanted to is also somewhat dubious, too. In October 2014, IBM sold off its Microelectronics division to Globalfoundries, itself a spinout of AMD’s foundry business five years earlier mashed up with Chartered Semiconductor and backed by the government of Abu Dhabi. Here’s the complication: IBM sued Globalfoundries, the maker of the two “Nimbus” and “Cumulus” variants of the Power9 chip, back in July 2021, which no doubt made it very uncomfortable for Big Blue to get any more Power9 chips. Globalfoundries countersued IBM in April of this year, saying that Big Blue sold semiconductor intellectual property it no longer had the rights over to Intel and Rapidus, a government-backed chip consortium in Japan.
We presume IBM had lots and lots of the Power9 chips made, enough to meet the expected demand over a certain timeframe, and it would be difficult to go back and ask for Globalfoundries to etch some more Power9 devices. And with Samsung etching the Power10 chips, and the yields not being great (or awful, considering this is Samsung’s first time making a server chip), IBM no doubt wants to push the maximum volumes possible on the Power10 chips to improve that yield.
In announcement letter AD23-0252 on May 9, the Power9 lineup was withdrawn from marketing. As is often the case, the withdrawals are staggered, with certain models being removed from the IBM catalog sooner and others later. It is very likely that this is some kind of indication about what number of specific Power9 machines are still left in the Big Blue Barn.
The two variants of the Power AC922 hybrid CPU-GPU machines, which are the basis of the “Summit” supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the “Sierra” supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and being withdrawn effective August 9. These Linux machines use Nvidia “Volta” V100 GPU accelerators that are now two generations old, so no surprises here. And IBM is not integrating Power10 machines tightly with the highest performing of the current “Hopper” H100 GPU accelerators from Nvidia, which use NVSwitch memory fabrics to scale GPU performance within a node. (IBM may support PCI-Express 5.0 variants of the GPUs in current Power10 machines, but it has not made any fuss at all about this.) Customers have to take delivery of any Power AC922 machines they do order by September 9.
The October 20 deadline for Power9 system withdrawals is going to hit a lot closer to home, particularly with the withdrawal of the P05-class single-socket Power S914 and the P10-class dual-socket Power S922 and Power S924 machines. The four-socket Power E950 is also being withdrawn on the same day, and this may be a cause for concern for some AIX shops using the four-socket Power9 machines. (IBM i was not supported on the Power E950.) A very large number of IBM i shops can easily do all of their processing on a Power S914 machine, and many do. And many customers who might buy a Power S914 are not looking forward to paying a lot more money for a Power S1014, which has a lot more performance to be fair but maybe more than they really need.
Anyway, customers have until November 20 to take delivery of a Power S914, Power S922, Power S924, Power S922, or a Power E950.
And finally, other members of the Power9 family of machines also come out of the IBM catalog on October 20. This includes the Power H922S, the Power H924S, and the Healthcare Solution Edition variants of the Power S924, Power E950, and Power E980. Customers have until November 20 to take delivery of these machines.
The plain vanilla Power E980 has not been withdrawn as far as we can tell.
Obviously, IBM will sell Power9 systems and upgrade features until they are gone. There will, however, be lots of Power9 iron coming into the secondhand market, in many cases from IBM itself, as it does upgrades and system swaps to Power10 machinery for IBM i and AIX customers around the world. And just a reminder that IBM will provide tech support services for Power9 equipment for many years yet.
RELATED STORIES
The Inevitable Wave Of Power9 Withdrawals Begins
A Shot Across The Bow For Power8 Upgrades
Some Power9 Tweaks And Withdrawals
Some More Power Systems Stuff Swept Into The Dustbin
More Vintage Power Systems Feature Withdrawals
More Vintage Power Systems Stuff Gets The Plug Pulled
IBM Pulls The Plug On First Pass Power9 Entry Machines
Power7 And Power7+ Will Truly Be Dead At The End Of 2020
The Power S812 Gets Yet Another Stay Of Execution
Tweaking Systems And Withdrawal Symptoms
More Withdrawals For Vintage Power Gear
More Power7 And Power8 Features To Bite The Rust
IBM Sunsets Big Iron Power8 Engines As Power9 Engines Loom
IBM Inks In End Of Support For Power6 And Power7 Iron
Sundry Withdrawals For Power7 And Power7+ Gear
Clearing The Decks Ahead Of The Power9 Launch
Say Sayonara To IBM i 7.1 Next Spring
Since 7.3 will be EOS 9/2023 it’s likely that rNext will be out spring 2024. It’s likely that rNext will not be supported on Power 9 hardware.
7.5 Power 9 and above
7.4 Power 8 and above
7.3 Power 7 and above
7.2 Power 6 and above
7.1 Power 5 and above
EOS V5R4 9/2013, 7.2 announce 4/2014
EOS 6.1 9/2015, 7.3 announce 4/2016
EOS 7.1 9/2018, 7.4 announce 4/2019
EOS 7.2 4/2021, 7.5 announce 5/2023
EOS 7.3 9/2022, ???
IBM simply does not support X+3.
Yes, IBM shoots for a three year cycle but clearly states that compelling reasons may alter that. Perhaps something compelling is coming?
What are the tea leaves saying about Power 11? Aren’t the odd numbers of Power systems (like 11) geared towards the smaller models first?
I updated a Power 8 mainly because it no longer supported the newest OS. Unacceptable for a test box.
Granted, moving from 10k spinning drives to SAN based NVMe was beyond comparison.