Ibm Power Systems Performance Report May 2026

| System | Cores (max) | Frequency | Memory (max) | L3 Cache | RAS Level | |--------|------------|-----------|--------------|----------|------------| | Power E1080 (POWER10) | 240 | 3.5–4.15 GHz | 64 TB | 240 MB | Tier 1 (mainframe class) | | Power S1022s (POWER10) | 32 | 3.55 GHz | 4 TB | 32 MB | Tier 2 | | Power E980 (POWER9) | 192 | 3.5 GHz | 64 TB | 192 MB | Tier 1 | | x86 baseline (Intel Xeon Platinum 8480+) | 112 | 2.0 GHz (base) | 6 TB | 105 MB | Standard |

| Metric | Power E1080 (POWER10) | Power E980 (POWER9) | Xeon 8480+ 8‑socket | |--------|----------------------|---------------------|---------------------| | Memory bandwidth (STREAM TRIAD, GB/s) | 1,024 | 480 | 780 | | Max memory capacity | 64 TB | 64 TB | 32 TB | | Latency to local memory | 115 ns | 140 ns | 130 ns | ibm power systems performance report

By contrast, typical VMware on x86 showed 15–25% idle CPU tax and required dedicated cores for hypervisor overhead. | System | Cores (max) | Frequency |

| Metric | Power E1080 cluster | x86 cluster | Improvement | |--------|---------------------|-------------|--------------| | Total power (kW) | 28.4 | 81.2 | 65% less | | Rack units | 8U (4U per node) | 96U (4U per node) | 92% less | | Annual energy cost (@$0.12/kWh) | $29,800 | $85,300 | $55,500 saved | | Software licensing (Oracle) | $380,000 (core factor) | $1,520,000 (full cores) | $1.14M saved | I/O & Storage Performance Power10’s OpenCAPI and PCIe

Power Systems delivered and 30% lower average response time – critical for interactive SAP GUI users. 5. Virtualization & Consolidation Efficiency PowerVM (micro‑partitioning) allows up to 1,000 virtual processors per socket with dynamic resource balancing. Production telemetry (20 financial services customers) | Metric | Average | 95th percentile | |--------|---------|-----------------| | LPARs per physical core | 12.3 | 20 | | Overcommit ratio (vCPU:pCPU) | 3.2:1 | 5:1 | | Idle CPU waste (compared to bare metal) | <3% | 5% |

: A large European bank consolidated 240 x86 servers (running Oracle, WebSphere, MQ) onto 4 Power E1080 frames – saving $1.2M annually in software licensing (Oracle core factor 0.25 on Power vs 1.0 on x86) and 78% in data center power/cooling. 6. I/O & Storage Performance Power10’s OpenCAPI and PCIe Gen5 enable extremely low latency for NVMe and GPU.

| Operation | POWER10 (PCIe Gen5 NVMe) | POWER9 (PCIe Gen4) | Xeon (PCIe Gen5) | |-----------|--------------------------|--------------------|------------------| | 4K random read IOPS | 3.2 million | 1.9 million | 2.8 million | | Latency (µs, QD=1) | 28 | 52 | 35 | | NVMe over Fabrics (RoCE) throughput | 200 Gb/s | 100 Gb/s | 200 Gb/s |