POWER9

POWER9 is IBM's line of 64-bit Power ISA-based microprocessors, introduced in 2017 as the successor to POWER8. Designed for data centers, high-performance computing, and AI workloads, POWER9 forms the core of IBM's POWER9-based servers and accelerators and is implemented in multiple cloud and on-premises deployments.

Technical characteristics: POWER9 employs a multi-core design with hardware multithreading, high memory bandwidth, and support for large cache hierarchies. It is manufactured on a 14-nanometer FinFET process and provides PCIe 4.0 I/O to improve peripheral bandwidth. It also includes interfaces such as OpenCAPI for accelerator connectivity and, in configurations with NVIDIA GPUs, can utilize NVLink for CPU-GPU interconnect, enabling tight integration with accelerators.

Software and usage: The POWER9 ecosystem includes Linux distributions (such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, SUSE) alongside IBM's AIX and IBM i operating systems. It is deployed in IBM Power System servers, including AI and HPC-focused configurations, and is used in research clusters and enterprise workloads.

Impact: POWER9 marked a continuation of IBM's strategy to provide high-performance, accelerator-enabled processing in enterprise and research environments, and it established the foundation for subsequent POWER generations and open ecosystem initiatives.

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