by Dawn May | Jun 25, 2014 | Performance, PowerVM
This is the second installment in a two-part blog series to provide basic introduction to the PowerVM processor virtualization terminology and acronyms. The first part was heavy on terminology. This part will tie the terminology together and provide you with a better understanding of the trade-offs involved with PowerVM LPAR configuration as it pertains to processor virtualization. The IBM Redbooks publication, “IBM PowerVM Virtualization Introduction and Configuration” provides much greater detail. For an in-depth treatment of this material from an IBM i perspective, see “Under the Hood: POWER7 Logical Partitions.”
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by Dawn May | Jun 19, 2014 | PowerVM
This is the first installment in a two-part blog series to provide basic introduction to the PowerVM processor virtualization terminology and acronyms. The first part will be heavy on terms without much explanation; the second part will be just the opposite. The IBM Redbooks publication, “IBM PowerVM Virtualization Introduction and Configuration” provides much greater detail. For an in-depth treatment of this material from an IBM i perspective, see “Under the Hood: POWER7 Logical Partitions.” Let’s get started…
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by Dawn May | Sep 30, 2013 | Hardware, Work Management
Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) allows sharing of processor facilities to run two or more threads of execution at the same time on a single processing core. On POWER7, each processing core supports up to 4 threads of execution. SMT generally increases the performance capacity of a system and can improve the responsiveness of multithreaded applications. Running multiple instruction streams at the same time does not, however, improve the performance of any given task. POWER8 and POWER9 support up to 8 threads per processor core.
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by Dawn May | Feb 8, 2010 | Hardware, Performance
This blog reviews a few of the key features of POWER7 that were initially supported in the IBM i 6.1.1 release. While this blog is a bit dated, some of the key concepts of SMT, energy management, and processor frequency remain applicable to current current generations of POWER hardware and IBM i releases. Links have been updated to reference current information on these topics.
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