IBM Power11 Raises the Bar for Enterprise IT

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

IBM revealed IBM Power11, the next generation of IBM® Power® servers. Redesigned with innovations across its processor, hardware architecture, and virtualization software stack, Power11 is designed to deliver the availability, resiliency, performance, and scalability enterprises demand, for seamless hybrid deployment on-premises or in IBM Cloud.

Organizations across industries have long run their most mission-critical, data-intensive workloads on IBM Power, most notably those within the banking, healthcare, retail, and government spaces. Now, enterprises face an onslaught of new technologies and solutions as they transition into the age of AI. IDC found that one billion new logical applications are expected by 2028, and the proliferation of these systems poses new complexities for companies.1 IBM built Power11 to deliver simplified, always-on operations with hybrid cloud flexibility for enterprises to maintain competitiveness in the AI era.

Power11 is designed to be the most resilient server in the history of the IBM Power platform, with 99.9999% of uptime.2 Together with zero planned downtime for system maintenance3 and less than one-minute guaranteed ransomware threat detection with IBM Power Cyber Vault, 4 Power11 sets a new bar for business continuity, addressing both planned and cyber-incident-related downtime.

For the first time ever, the Power11 general availability will simultaneously include high-end, mid-range, and entry servers as well as IBM Power Virtual Server in IBM Cloud. IBM Power Virtual Server offers a fast path to the cloud for Power workloads, and is certified as a hyperscaler platform for RISE with SAP.  Power11 will also be the first IBM Power server to support the IBM Spyre Accelerator, IBM's system-on-a-chip available Q4 2025 that is purpose-built for today's AI-intensive inference workloads. Available across IBM's enterprise systems portfolio, including Power11, IBM z17, and LinuxONE 5, Spyre will deliver advanced AI acceleration to help organizations scale AI across hybrid cloud environments.

With support for autonomous operations, Power11 delivers intelligent performance gains that reduce complexity and improve workload efficiency. Power11 offers up to 55% better core performance compared to Power95 and has up to 45% more capacity with higher core counts in entry and mid-range systems compared to Power10.6  This upgraded performance means that with Power11, enterprises are positioned to achieve enhanced flexibility and security, to transform their enterprise processes through automation.

With Power11, customers can expect:

• Zero planned downtime for system maintenance. Power11 provides enterprises with a solution that can avoid costly planned downtime and help reduce operational risk. Through advanced technologies like autonomous patching and automated workload movement, planned system maintenance events can occur without ever taking critical applications offline. This feature can free IT professionals from spending time planning, testing, and executing upgrades to their systems, to focusing on higher-value work and innovation. Furthermore, IBM Power will interoperate with IBM Concert using generative AI to help identify operational risks, provide actionable insights, and automate remediation, starting with security patch management. IBM Technology Lifecycle Services (TLS), IBM's global infrastructure support provider, complements this feature with premium, AI-powered services designed to help proactively monitor system health, reduce downtime, and optimize system reliability and performance.
• Less than one minute ransomware threat detection with IBM Power Cyber Vault. The Power Cyber Vault solution is an integrated cyber resiliency solution following NIST cybersecurity framework to help identify, protect, detect, and automatically respond to cyber threats. Cyber Vault provides protection against cyberattacks such as data corruption and encryption with proactive immutable snapshots that are automatically captured, stored, and tested on a custom-defined schedule. Power11 also uses NIST-approved built-in quantum-safe cryptography designed to help protect systems from harvest-now, decrypt-later attacks as well as firmware integrity attacks.
• Transformed business processes with AI integration. Power11 delivers AI-ready infrastructure with built-in, on-chip acceleration for inferencing and will be able to scale to support mission-critical AI workloads through the IBM Spyre Accelerator. Combined with Red Hat OpenShift AI and a broad ecosystem of open-source software and toolkits, Power11 is built to provide the flexibility and performance needed to operationalize AI across hybrid environments. To further modernize application development, IBM watsonx Code Assistant for i will help developers extend critical RPG applications for greater ease and productivity. IBM will also make watsonx.data, its hybrid, open data lakehouse, available on Power11 by the end of 2025.
• Efficient IT that saves time and money. Beyond the autonomous processes that support zero planned downtime and IBM Power Cyber Vault, Power11 delivers meaningful efficiency gains across the IT stack. Separately, in terms of energy efficiency, Power11 offers twice the performance per watt versus comparable x86 servers7 and up to 28 percent better server efficiency with the new Energy Efficient Mode compared to Maximum Performance Mode on Power11. 8

"IBM Power11 changes the game for enterprise computing," said Tom McPherson, GM, Power Systems at IBM. "With Power11, clients can accelerate into the AI era with innovations tailored to their most pressing business needs. We are taking advantage of the full IBM stack to deliver hybrid cloud, AI, and automation capabilities while building on our decades-long reputation as a trustworthy hybrid infrastructure for essential workloads."

"With just 20 minutes and the help of watsonx Code Assistant for i on Power, I was able to investigate a report, trace the field logic, understand the calculation, and document the issue," said Jasmine Kaczmarek, VP of Technology at MR Williams. "What had taken a senior developer six hours the day before, I was able to accomplish 18 times faster. That's truly remarkable when you think about it. This kind of productivity gain is exactly what Power11 is designed for. By empowering developers to modernize core business applications faster and more confidently, AI-augmented tools built into the platform can help increase long-lasting business value."

"We're committed to helping the people of Florida receive the quality health care they can afford," said William Allarey, Sr. IT Manager at GuideWell. "With the new IBM Power11 automation capabilities, we are very interested in faster and more frequent maintenance updates with no planned downtime to keep the servers secure, stable, and current, so our team can focus on delivering benefits and services for better health. In addition, the native AI capabilities and significant system performance gains of the Power11 will allow our company to leverage AI for a clearer and faster claims experience."

"Temenos' collaboration with IBM has already proven the value of running mission-critical workloads on IBM Power," said William Moroney, Chief Revenue Officer at Temenos. "With the launch of Power11, that potential grows even further by bringing an AI-ready infrastructure, zero-downtime resilience, and even greater performance to the financial services industry. We look forward to our continued partnership to help clients modernize their core banking on this built for hybrid cloud platform." 

(1) IDC: 1 Billion New Logical Applications: More Background, (doc #US51953724, April 2024).
(2) Based upon unplanned downtime of a single Power E1180 system as calculated in the POWER11 Processor-Based Systems RAS (see section: 99.9999% uptime).
(3) Based upon IBM internal testing of system upgrade scenarios; many (i.e. VIOS, hot plug adapters, I/O adapter FW, and concurrent system firmware updates) can be done in-place while some (i.e. non-concurrent system FW and HW maintenance) may require Live Partition Mobility (LPM) support.
(4) This guarantee covers only the displaying of an alert in less then one minute. Remediation is in the form of drive replacement up to the cost of the Covered Product. Terms and conditions apply.
(5) Based upon IBM internal measurements of a commercial core banking solution running on IBM Power E950 compared to an E1150.
(6) Based upon current IBM Power rPerf and CPW estimates for E1150, S1124 and S1122 versus E1050, S1024 and S1022 respectively.
(7) Based upon IBM measurements of performance per watt on servers comparing Maximum Performance Mode to Energy-Efficient Mode while running compute-, disk-, and memory-based workloads on Power11 systems with fully configured sockets and memory as follows: E1180 with 4x10c / 64x64GB DDIMM, E1150 with4x16c / 64x32GB DDIMM , S1124 with 2x16c / 32x32GB DDIMM , S1122 with 2x16c / 32x32GB DDI.

Energy consumption is based on maximum input power: IBM Power E1050 with maximum power of 5,200 W; HPE Compute Scale Up Server 3200 with maximum power of 4,740 W.

8Based upon IBM measurements of performance per watt on servers comparing Maximum Performance Mode to Energy-Efficient Mode while running compute-, disk-, and memory-based workloads on Power11 systems with fully configured sockets and memory as follows: E1180 with 4x10c / 64x64GB DDIMM,  E1150 with 4x16c / 64x32GB DDIMM, S1124 with 2x16c / 32x32GB DDIMM, S1122 with 2x16c / 32x32GB DDIMM.