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POWER9 - Microarchitectures - IBM
| Edit Values | |
| POWER9 µarch | |
| General Info | |
| Arch Type | CPU |
| Designer | IBM |
| Manufacturer | GlobalFoundries |
| Introduction | August, 2017 |
| Phase-out | August, 2018 |
| Process | 14 nm |
| Core Configs | 24 |
| Pipeline | |
| Type | Superscalar |
| Speculative | Yes |
| Reg Renaming | Yes |
| Stages | 12-16 |
| Instructions | |
| ISA | Power ISA v3.0 |
| Cache | |
| L1I Cache | 32 KiB/core |
| L1D Cache | 32 KiB/core |
| L2 Cache | 512 KiB/core |
| L3 Cache | 120 MiB/chip |
| Succession | |
POWER9 is IBM's successor to POWER8, a 14 nm microarchitecture for Power-based server microprocessors that is set to be introduced in the 2nd half of 2017. POWER9-based processors are branded under the POWER9 family.
Contents
Process Technology
POWER9 is set to be fabricated on GlobalFoundries' 14 nm FinFET process, the same process that's used by AMD for their Zen microarchitecture.
Compatibility
Initial support for POWER9 started with Linux Kernel 4.8.
| Vendor | OS | Version | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| IBM | AIX | 7.? | Support |
| IBM i | ? | Support | |
| Linux | Linux | Kernel 4.8 | Initial Support |
| Wind River | VxWorks | VxWorks 7.? | Support |
Compiler support
| Compiler | CPU | Arch-Favorable |
|---|---|---|
| GCC | -mcpu=pwr9 |
-mtune=pwr9
|
| LLVM | -mcpu=pwr9 |
-mtune=pwr9
|
| XL C/C++ | -mcpu=pwr9 |
-mtune=pwr9
|
Architecture
Key changes from POWER8
- 14 nm process (from 22 nm)
- 17-layer metal stack
- 8,000,000,000 transistors
- Support for Power ISA v3.0
- Higher single-thread performance
- New highly modular architecture
- Shorter pipeline
- 5 stages eliminated from fetch to compute vs POWER8
- Cache
- 120 MiB NUCA L3
- eDRAM
- 7 TB/s on-chip bandwidth
- 120 MiB NUCA L3
- Hardware Acceleration
- I/O Subsystem
- Virtualization
- QoS assistance
- New Interrupt architecture
- Workload-optimized frequency
- Hardware enforced trusted execution
Pipeline
 |
This section is empty; you can help add the missing info by editing this page. |
Scalability
IBM offers POWER9 in two flavors: Scale-Out and Scale-Up.
Die Shot
Tetracosa-Core
- GlobalFoundries 14 nm FinFET Process
- 17-layer metal stack
- 8,000,000,000 transistors
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See also
Facts about "POWER9 - Microarchitectures - IBM"
| codename | POWER9 + |
| core count | 24 + |
| designer | IBM + |
| first launched | August 2017 + |
| full page name | ibm/microarchitectures/power9 + |
| instance of | microarchitecture + |
| instruction set architecture | Power ISA v3.0 + |
| manufacturer | GlobalFoundries + |
| microarchitecture type | CPU + |
| name | POWER9 + |
| phase-out | August 2018 + |
| pipeline stages (max) | 16 + |
| pipeline stages (min) | 12 + |
| process | 14 nm (0.014 μm, 1.4e-5 mm) + |