The Power E1050 server is ideal for cloud deployments because of its built-in virtualization, flexible capacity, and high usage. The machine type model number of the Power E1050 server is 9043-MRX. It is a single enclosure server that is four EIA units tall (4U). It can be configured with two, three, or four dual-chip modules (DCMs). Three processor options are available:
Ê Twelve cores running at a typical 3.35 – 4.00 GHz (max) frequency range
Ê Eighteen cores running at a typical 3.20 – 4.00 GHz (max) frequency range
Ê Twenty-four cores running at a typical 2.95 – 3.90 GHz (max) frequency range
A Power E1050 server with four 24-core DCMs offers the maximum of 96 cores. All processor cores can run up to eight simultaneous threads to deliver greater throughput. All sockets must be populated with the same processor modules.
Figure 1-1 shows the Power E1050 server.
Figure 1-1 The Power E1050 server
Figure 1-2 shows a top view of the Power E1050 server with the top lid removed. Under the left metal plate are the fans and Non-volatile Memory Express (NVMe) slots, as shown in Figure 1-3 on page 4. Going to the right, you can see the memory slots that belong the processors to the right of that memory column. Going further to the right, there is another column of memory slots that belong to the processors to the right of them. Under the metal plate at the right edge are the four Titanium class 2300W power supplies and the 11 Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) slots, as shown in Figure 1-4 on page 5. The air flow goes from the front to the rear of the server, which in Figure 1-2 is from left to right.
2 IBM Power E1050: Technical Overview and Introduction
Figure 1-2 Top view of the Power E1050 server with the top lid removed
Each processor module that is added to the system offers 16 Open Memory Interface (OMI) slots that can be populated with 4U Differential Dual Data Rate DIMMs (DDIMMs). At the time of writing, these DDIMMs incorporate Double Data Rate 4 (DDR4) memory chips that deliver an increased memory bandwidth of up to 409 GBps peak transfer rates per socket. With four processor modules, the Power E1050 server provides 64 OMI slots that support up to 16 TB of memory and a maximum peak transfer rate of 1.636 GBps.
The Power E1050 server provides state-of-the-art PCIe Gen5 connectivity. Up to 11 PCIe slots are provided in the system unit with different characteristics:
Ê Six PCIe Gen4 x16 or PCIe Gen5 x8 slots
Ê Two PCIe Gen5 x8 slots
Ê Three PCIe Gen4 x8 slots
The number of available slots depends on the number of available processor modules. For more information about the system diagram, see Figure 2-1 on page 35.
Note: Although some slots are x8 capable only, all connectors in the system have x16 connectors.
If more slots are needed, up to four PCIe Gen3 I/O Drawers with two fanout modules each can be added to the system. Each fanout module provides six slots. With eight fanout modules in four I/O drawers, the maximum number of available slots is 51.
The PCIe slots can be populated with a range of adapters covering local area network (LAN), Fibre Channel (FC), serial-attached SCSI (SAS), Universal Serial Bus (USB), and cryptographic accelerators. At least one network adapter must be included in each system.
The Power E1050 server offers up to 10 internal NVMe U.2 flash bays that can be equipped with 800 GB U.2 Mainstream NVMe drives or U.2 Enterprise class NVMe drives in different sizes up to 6.4 TB. Each NVMe device is connected as a separate PCIe endpoint and can be assigned individually to VMs for best flexibility. The 10 NVMe bays offer a maximum of 64 TB internal storage. For all 10 NVMe bays to b available, the server must be populated with all
Chapter 1. IBM Power E1050 overview 3
four processor cards. With two or three processor cards, the server can be populated with six NVMe devices.
The Power E1050 server does not have internal spinning SAS drives. However, it is possible to attach 19-inch disk expansion drawers that offer SFF Gen2-carrier bays for SAS disks. For more information, see 2.3, “Internal I/O subsystem” on page 65.
In addition to extensive hardware configuration flexibility, the Power E1050 server offers Elastic Capacity on Demand (Elastic CoD) temporarily for both processor cores and memory; IBM Active Memory Expansion; and Active Memory Mirroring (AMM) for hypervisor.
For the best flexibility, the Power E1050 server can be part of an IBM Power Private Cloud with Shared Utility Capacity pool, also known as IBM Power Enterprise Pool 2.0. It consists of Power E1050 servers, Power E950 servers, or a mix of both. In such a pool, Base Capacity can be purchased for processor cores, memory, and operating system (OS) licenses (AIX) or subscriptions (Linux). This Base Capacity is independent of the configuration of the servers. Even if only a small Base Capacity was purchased, all available resources of the servers in the pool can be used. If more resources are used than are available in the Base Capacity of the pool (the sum of all Base Capacities of all servers that are part of the pool), these additional used resources, that is, metered resource consumption, are billed. The metering is done on a per-minute basis. The billing can be pre-paid by purchasing credits upfront, or the billing can be post-pay. In a post-pay pool, IBM generates an invoice monthly.
The Power E1050 server includes IBM PowerVM Enterprise Edition to deliver virtualized environments and support a frictionless hybrid cloud experience. Workloads can run the AIX, and Linux OSs, including the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. IBM i is not a supported OS on the Power E1050 server.
The Power E1050 server also provides strong resiliency characteristics, which include Power10 chip capabilities and memory protection. The new 4U DDIMMS that are used in the Power E1050 server offer an enhanced buffer, N+1 voltage regulation, and spare dynamic RAM (DRAM) technology. Also, technologies like Chipkill with advanced error correction code (ECC) protection are included, and transparent Power10 memory encryption with no performance impact. This technology is the same enterprise class technology that is used in the Power E1080 server.
Other resiliency features that are available in the Power E1050 server are hot-plug NVMe bays, hot-plug PCIe slots, redundant and hot-plug power supplies, hot-plug redundant cooling fans, hot-plug Time of Day battery, and even highly resilient architecture for power regulators.
Figure 1-3 shows the front view of a Power E1050 server with the front bezel removed.
Figure 1-3 Front view of the Power E1050 server
4 IBM Power E1050: Technical Overview and Introduction
Figure 1-4 shows the rear view of the Power E1050 server. The leftmost slot (P0-C0) is the enterprise Baseboard Management Controller (eBMC) Service Processor Card, and then there are five PCIe slots. On the right side are six more adapter slots.
Figure 1-4 Rear view of the Power E1050 server
Table 1-1 shows a summary of features of the Power E1050 server.
Table 1-1 Power E1050 server feature summary
Chapter 1. IBM Power E1050 overview 5
Table 1-2 shows the major differences between the Power E950 and Power E1050 servers.
Table 1-2 Comparing the Power E950 and Power E1050 servers
