IBM (IBM.US) Releases Power11 Chip: Zero Downtime Maintenance+AI Acceleration to Reshape Enterprise Computing Security Standards

The Zhitong Finance App learned that IBM (IBM.US) officially launched a new generation of Power11 chips and supporting server products on July 8, 2025, marking its first major technology upgrade since the launch of Power10 in 2020. This Power11 server, which is scheduled to be launched globally on July 25, provides enterprises with hybrid cloud solutions that combine availability, elasticity and scalability through comprehensive innovation in processors, hardware architectures, and virtualization software stacks.

According to official disclosure, the core performance of the Power11 is up to 55% higher than the Power9, the core capacity of entry-level and mid-tier systems is increased by 45% compared to the Power10, and it supports the self-developed AI accelerator chip Spyre Accelerator for the first time, demonstrating IBM's deep technical accumulation in critical business workloads.

System reliability

In terms of reliability, Power11 achieves 99.9999% system availability, and supports zero-planned downtime maintenance through self-repair and automatic load transfer technology. The built-in IBM Power Cyber Vault security solution can detect and respond to ransomware threats within 1 minute. Its immutable point-in-time state recording function and NIST quantum security encryption technology have built a data resilience framework that meets international standards for enterprises. This characteristic is particularly important in the financial services industry. For example, partner customer Temenos pointed out that Power11 provides a dual guarantee of zero downtime and high performance for the modernization of global banking core systems.

Chip technology architecture

In terms of technical architecture, Power11 uses a 7 nm process. The single chip integrates 8 high-performance cores. Each core is equipped with 4.5 MB of second-level cache, and the total cache capacity is 36 MB. At the virtualization level, its L3 and L4 caches were expanded to 360MB and 2.88GB respectively, an increase of 40% over the previous generation, significantly optimizing large-scale data processing efficiency. Global AI server spending is expected to reach 140 billion US dollars in 2025, 80% of which is concentrated in the hardware sector. Power11's energy efficiency advantages are expected to take the lead in the popularity of liquid-cooled data centers.

server specs

As the first Power server to support Spyre Accelerator, Power11 achieved a breakthrough in AI computing power expansion. The Spyre Accelerator uses a 75W PCIe Gen5 interface, is equipped with 32 dedicated cores and 64MB scraper memory, supports int4/int8/fp8/fp16 multi-precision computation, and a single card can provide 24TOPS computing power. Through the parallel deployment of 8 cards, the system memory bandwidth can reach 1.6 Tb/s to meet the inference requirements of complex language models. According to the IBM technical white paper, the collaborative design of Spyre and Telum II processors enables enterprises to connect traditional models with large-scale language models, such as prioritizing lightweight models in transaction processing, and automatically switching complex scenarios to high-precision models to achieve balance between resource optimization and accuracy.

In terms of market reaction, IBM's stock rose slightly by 0.5% on the day Power11 was released, but analysts are wary of its long-term growth. Seeking Alpha pointed out that although IBM has an active layout in the field of hybrid cloud and AI, its annual dividend growth rate has fallen to a ten-year low, and its price-earnings ratio is close to 23 times higher, compounded by a debt burden of 58.4 billion US dollars, which may limit future profit margins. However, IBM is still regarded as a trusted hybrid architecture supplier based on its experience with critical business workloads in the financial and healthcare industries.

This release was defined by Tom McPherson, general manager of IBM Power Systems, as a “game changer for enterprise computing.” By integrating the Red Hat OpenShift AI ecosystem with the WatsonX data platform, Power11 not only supports local deployment, but also provides virtual server options that are seamlessly connected to IBM Cloud. The service has passed RISE with SAP certification. Driven by the surge in AI computing power demand and green data center construction, Power11 is expected to inject new momentum into IBM's hybrid cloud market competition with its comprehensive advantages in performance, security, and energy efficiency.