Specifications

Chapter 2. Architecture and technical

overview

The IBM Power 780 offers two versions of CEC enclosure. The first is a 2-socket CEC

enclosure, populated with 8-core POWER7 processor cards. This architecture (Figure 2-1 on

page 38) enables a maximum system configuration of 64 processors. The Power 780 also

offers a 4-socket CEC enclosure, populated with 6-core POWER7 processor cards

(Figure 2-2 on page 39), enabling a maximum system configuration of 96 cores.

The IBM Power 770 offers a 2-socket CEC enclosure, populated with 6-core or 8-core

POWER7 processors.

This chapter provides an overview of the system architecture and its major components. The

bandwidths that are provided are theoretical maximums used for reference.

The speeds shown are at an individual component level. Multiple components and application

implementation are key to achieving the best performance.

Always do the performance sizing at the application workload environment level and evaluate

performance using real-world performance measurements and production workloads.