IBM updates Power7 line

IBM has added new blade server models to its Power7 datacentre platform.

The company said that it would be offering three new blade servers equipped with the Power7 chip. Designed for the company's BladeCentre platform, the new servers will be offered in 4, 8, and 16 core versions.

Big Blue is hoping that the new models will combine the performance increase of the Power7 chips with the efficiency advantages of the blade server format. The company estimates that the new Power7 BladeCentre models can reach from 188 to 225 percent better performance than HP and Oracle's respective blade lines.

The company further touted the processing power of the Power7 line when it revealed that the full-size Power 780 server was able to handle loads of up to 1.2 million transactions per second in a recent benchmark test and set further records for its performance in Java and high performance benchmark tests.

The performance numbers were released by IBM to help push a new line of administrative and developer tools for enterprise IT departments.

In addition to the new blade servers, the company is releasing an update to the IBM i 7 operating environment as well as an update to the AIX operating system and a new Rational development tool which touts up to 30 percent better efficiency.