A new, flexible computing platform providing three times as many cores as current one-unit rack servers has been introduced by IBM. The NeXtScale System is suited to growing workloads such as social media, analytics, technical computing and cloud delivery. The latest addition to IBM's x86 portfolio, NeXtScale is designed specifically to run those applications with the power of a supercomputer in any data centre, via a simple, flexible and open architecture that will support options for compute, storage, and graphics processing acceleration.
This new system incorporates up to 84 x86-based systems and 2,016 processing cores in a standard EIA 19-inch rack, allowing easy integration into any data centre. It uses industry-standard components including I/O cards and top-of-rack networking switches for flexibility of choice and ease of adoption. IBM also provides a powerful software stack to run on top of NeXtScale, including IBM General Parallel File System, GPFS Storage Server, xCAT, and Platform Computing, providing powerful scheduling, management and optimisation tools.
In addition, IBM has introduced the x3650 M4 HD, an enhancement of its 3650-class system featuring first-in-class 12-gigabyte RAID and a 60 per cent higher spindle count for higher density storage and higher IO performance.
IBM NeXtScale and System x3650 M4 HD are two new entries headlining a broad refresh of the entire System x core server portfolio of two-socket systems including System x racks and towers, Flex System, iDataPlex, and BladeCenter offerings. All of these offerings will feature the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 product family.
