User:Torpcoms/Timemark/POWER9

I time marked a POWER9 chip webinar from January if anyone is interested, it has a fair amount of detailed information:

The YouTube video appears to be down at the moment, apparently unintentionally, but the slides and video can be downloaded at the AIX Virtual User Group's webpage, the slides can be found under the heading "January 26, 2017 - POWER9 - Jeff Stuecheli", while the video files are listed by a bare index page at public.dhe.ibm.com.

Time markers

0:00 intro/VUG announcements - Jill Armstrong
2:59 presentation start - Jeff Stuecheli (chip development)
3:54 POWER roadmap
7:22 POWER9 markets
11:15 core design - SMT8 vs SMT4
14:20 core execution slice microarchitecture
17:43 pipeline improvements
19:30 core diagram slide - SMT4 core
21:00 memory attachment - SO vs SU
25:08 common features
32:12 SO/SU SMT4/SMT8 matrix
34:15 performance vs POWER8
35:53 POWER ISA 3 instructions
38:42 POWER 9 logical view - interconnects/throughput
39:57 25 Gb/s signaling for SMP, Open CAPI, NVLink 2
41:10 16 socket topology - probably called 980
42:23 interrupt design
44:18 accelerators
47:09 accelerator connection types
49:38 progression - PCIe3 → PCIe4 → NVLink → Open CAPI
50:42 POWER9 ecosystem
51:30 Open CAPI
55:01 members
56:12 Open CAPI 3 features
57:24 virtual addressing
57:55 attached memory et al.
59:21 end of slides
1:00:01 Q&A start
1:00:39 Q: performance vs POWER8 - graph same for SMT4 compared as for SMT8 compared?
1:02:34 Q: can different chip types be mixed
1:03:26 Q: chip speeds
1:04:33 Q: ISA affecting AIX version compatibility
1:05:51 Q: live partition mobility
1:06:36 Q: number of 25 Gb/s links
1:08:10 Q: SMT4 vs SMT8, Linux vs AIX
1:10:29 Q: POWER9 vs x86
1:12:39 Q: DW on chart - looking for slide
1:14:04 -- relevant slide for above found
1:14:36 Q: are charts/slides confidential
1:15:17 announce NDA session in Orlando
1:16:45 Q: Java improvements
1:17:43 Q: Open CAPI attached memory uses
1:19:20 Q: PCIe4 adapters/uses
1:21:34 Q: accelerator effect on rPerf
1:23:17 Q: will it run Windows
1:23:36 Q: SAP HANA offerings, upgrade path
1:24:03 Q: dynamic SMT
1:24:56 threading changes from POWER8
1:25:45 end remarks

Interesting Notes

Intended Use of Chips (slide 10)

	SMT4	SMT8
SO	PowerNV	dual-socket PowerVM
SU		multi-socket PowerVM

The SMT4 column is labelled "Linux ecosystem", but is talking about PowerNV; saying Linux is actually a bit confusing since you can run Linux under PowerVM.

I wonder why PowerVM benefits from SMT8 where Linux does not?

25 Gb/s optical connexion (slide 14)

in addition to PCIe4 (which carries CAPI 2) there is also optical 25 Gb/s connection used by Open CAPI, NVLink 2, and SMP interconnect; cool.