Glossary

IBM Power6 Glossary

IBM Power6, IBM i, and Power hardware history and migration terminology, defined in plain English.

C

• Capacity on Demand (CoD) ... IBM's licensing model that lets a Power server ship with more processor or memory capacity installed than activated, with additional capacity unlocked temporarily or permanently as needed.
• CPW ... IBM's relative performance benchmark for IBM i systems, used to compare processing capacity across different Power hardware generations and models.

D

• Decimal Floating Point (DFP) ... A hardware-level numeric format for exact decimal arithmetic, added to the POWER6 processor, useful for financial and commercial calculations that binary floating point handles imprecisely.

E

• End of Service (EOS / EOSL) ... The date IBM stops offering standard hardware maintenance for a given system, after which factory parts, contracted field service, and firmware updates are no longer available through IBM directly.

I

• i5/OS ... The name used for the AS/400's operating system from 2004 to 2008, between OS/400 and IBM i, tied to the POWER5 processor generation it launched alongside.
• IBM i ... The current name of the operating system that ran the AS/400 as OS/400 and later i5/OS. Renamed to IBM i in April 2008, alongside the Power Systems brand unification.

L

• LPAR ... A logical partition: an independent, virtualized instance of an operating system running on a shared physical Power server.

P

• Power Systems ... The unified IBM server brand created in April 2008 when System i and System p, previously separate product lines, merged on the POWER6 processor generation.
• POWER6 ... IBM's dual-core processor generation shipped starting May 2007, notable for very high clock speeds and hardware decimal floating-point support.
• POWER6+ ... A later, higher-clocked refresh of the POWER6 processor, not a separate generation, reaching clock speeds up to roughly 4.7-5.0 GHz on some configurations.
• PowerVM ... IBM's virtualization platform for Power Systems, introduced as a unified brand alongside the POWER6 launch in May 2007.

S

• System i ... IBM's server product line running i5/OS (later IBM i), the direct descendant of the AS/400, sold as a separate brand from System p until the 2008 Power Systems unification.
• System p ... IBM's AIX/Linux-focused server product line, sold on the same underlying POWER processor family as System i but as a separate brand until the 2008 Power Systems unification.

T

• Third-Party Maintenance (TPM) ... Hardware maintenance and support provided by a company other than IBM, typically used for hardware past IBM's own end-of-service date.