iSeries architecture: Fundamental strength of the IBM ^ i5 and iSeries 15
Draft Document for Review October 18, 2004 5486AdvTech.fm
Hierarchy of microprocessors
iSeries servers are designed for business computing. One of the fundamental
characteristics of that environment is that it is I/O-intensive, rather than
compute-intensive. In addition to outstanding performance in the business
environment, the microprocessor design hierarchy gives the iSeries server an
elegant method of integrating diverse environments into a single, harmonious
customer solution.
The microprocessors that look after a particular I/O device are accommodated
on I/O cards that fit into slots on the system buses. One of these cards may be
the Integrated xSeries® Server. This is a PC on a card, which enables the iSeries
server to run a Windows server, for example.
The following figure shows a highly simplified architecture indicating some of the
maximum configuration values for a Model 595.
High performance on an iSeries server is achieved by using many individual high
performance microprocessors, I/O devices, and interconnect technologies. Key
to the iSeries high performance is the POWER5 distributed switch that supports
enormous bandwidth between processors, cache, memory, and I/O. While
Balanced System Architecture Model 890
Processor
+ Cache
System Main Storage Bus
Main
Storage
I/O hub
I/O Switching Bridge
IOP / IOA
IOP / IOA
Integrated
xSeries
Server
Integrated
xSeries
Server
I
B
M
I
B
M
External
xSeries
Server
I/O Switching Bridge
I/O hub
PCI bus
HSL - 1GB/s
HSL - 1 GB/s
HSL - 1 GB/s
205 GB/sec peak
memory bandwidth
16 GB/sec peak I/O bandwidth
24/32-way
256 GB
144 TB disk storage
15k rpm drives
672 PCI-X slots
48 IXS
60 IXA
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