Big Blue thinks small, again, with POWER tower

IBM has again teased small hardware, this time in the form of an update for its smallest POWER server. The model S1112, teased Tuesday in a customer announcement, is a 2U, single-socket POWER11 server IBM offers in rack-mountable and what the company calls Tower/deskside configuration." The rackable model can handle a ten-core POWER processor. The Tower/deskside form factor machine must make do with a four-core engine IBM seems to have two roles in mind for the new machines: edge deployments and standalone use by those who are taking their first strides into using the last remaining proprietary minicomputer ecosystem. One is edge deployments. The other is as an entry-level box, with the description of the tower unit suggesting its very existence means even the smallest customers" can use it as an on-ramp to more POWER implementations. News of the S1112 marks the second time in a week that IBM has gone low with modest hardware. Last week Big Blue teased the z17 ME2, a rackable mainframe that it said completed its range by offering a smaller and cheaper piece of hardware. The twin launches continue IBM's policy of creating smaller versions of its enterprise hardware, albeit well after launch of big iron: the first POWER 11 boxes landed in July 2025 and the first z17 series mainframes debuted in April of the same year. The S1112 includes a quartet of DIMM slots and can handle up to 512GB of DDR5 memory. The box runs IBM i, AIX, and Linux - or all three because it supports IBM's PowerVM virtualization tools. In an almost certain non-coincidence, Big Blue on Tuesday also announced upgrades for PowerVM including improved automation and support for the S1112. Big Blue has also looked after users of bigger POWER fleets, by expanding the number of Spyre accelerators - IBM's neural processing units - that POWER servers can support from eight to twelve. IBM pitches POWER as a capable AI platform, so allowing it to use more accelerators can't hurt. IBM plans to start selling most of the kit described above on July 24, although customers who crave the S1112 to deploy in Taiwan will have to wait until September. 15. Would-be buyers in South Africa, India, and China must wait longer still, until December 11. (R)