Technical information

IBM Europe, Middle East, and Africa Hardware
Announcement ZG14-0098
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or in combination to deliver a reliable and high-performance infrastructure for
business intelligence (BI) and predictive analytics. The software is installed and
configured on the server before being shipped, reducing the time and effort required
to gain the benefits of the solution. These analytics solutions are available for any
new POWER8 processor-based system:
• IBM Solution for Analytics Power Systems Edition
• IBM BLU Acceleration Power Systems Edition
IBM Solution for Analytics Power Systems Edition is a flexible, integrated solution
that provides options to preload and configure one or more IBM analytics
applications with data warehouse acceleration. IBM Solution for Analytics Power
Systems Edition delivers Cognos® Business Intelligence capabilities on POWER8
processor-based servers running AIX or Linux. Cognos Business Intelligence is
designed to help business users, executives, and analysts in an organization
understand the business and make smarter decisions. The solution offers a full
range of BI capabilities, including reports, analysis, dashboards, scorecards, mobile
BI, and more.
IBM Solution for Analytics Power Systems Edition also delivers SPSS® predictive
analytics combined with business rules capabilities on a Power server platform
running AIX. SPSS Modeler, SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services, and
Analytical Decision Management help empower organizations to make the right
decision each time for high-demand, mission-critical business requirements.
This solution combines and integrates predictive analytics, rules, scoring, and
optimization techniques into an organization's processes to deliver recommended
actions at the point of impact.
BLU Acceleration Power Systems Edition is updated to deliver DB2® dynamic
in-memory, columnar data warehouse acceleration on a POWER8 processor-
based server running AIX. BLU Acceleration is an integral part of DB2 Advanced
Workgroup Edition and Advanced Enterprise Edition, enabling organizations to use
both row-based and columnar data storage simultaneously. With BLU Acceleration,
organizations can dramatically reduce the time to get analytic query results and
reports from existing data warehouses. Time and effort to set up analytics is
reduced by eliminating the need for aggregates, indexes, tuning, and partitions.
InfoSphere® DataStage® is also a preload option for providing extract, transform,
and load (ETL) capabilities from an existing data warehouse to the BLU Acceleration
warehouse. A separate purchase of the DB2 and InfoSphere software is required to
meet license use requirements.
For details, refer to Software Announcement ZG14-0094, dated April 28, 2014.
Statement of general direction
POWER8 I/O Planning Insights:
IBM plans to introduce an I/O drawer which will expand the number of PCIe Gen3/
Gen2 slots available on POWER8 processor-based Power Systems
FPGA CAPI Capability:
IBM plans to enable Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI) technology
capabilities for all POWER8 processor-based Power Systems using industry standard
accelerator technologies as a priced feature. IBM intends to build solutions with
its partners in order to further increase performance through faster computational
efficiency and by requiring fewer resources to accomplish tasks through direct
integration of workload accelerator(s) in the system.
IBM intends to continue working with Red Hat to support the Power S822, Power
S814, Power S824, Power S822L, and Power S812L servers with an upcoming Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 7 release. For additional questions about the availability of this
release and supported Power servers, consult the Red Hat Hardware Catalog at