IBM's new chip targets artificial intelligence workloads ( video) WRAL TechWire

HAMPTON, N.H. – IBM (NYSE: IBM) recently unveiled the newest member of the Power Systems family, the POWER9 chip which is uniquely designed for artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning and advanced analytics workloads as the vendor seeks to become the infrastructure foundation provider for the cognitive era. Along with POWER9 came the announcement of the IBM Power System AC922, designed to accompany the increased compute capabilities of POWER9 and touted by IBM as a system likely to become the most powerful supercomputer in the world. A key use case IBM highlighted was that of the CORAL (Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Livermore) supercomputer, which the U.S. government uses for massive volumes of AI workloads. To achieve the promises of Power Systems, IBM innovated across its hardware and software stacks to optimize the interworking of the two. The inclusion of NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs), second generation NVLink, PCIe 4.0 and OpenCAPI all increase the functionality of AC922 when compared to older solutions. Further, these developmental advancements enable IBM to tout five times more I/O bandwidth when compared to x86 servers, creating an environment ripe with pushback on industry standard servers as IBM seeks to take some of its lost market share back with its AI-centric platform.