Micro-Partitioning® distributes
the processing capacity of one or more physical processors among one
or more logical partitions. Micro-Partitioning significantly
increases overall utilization of processor resources within a system.
You can use Micro-Partitioning to
significantly increase utilization of processor resources in your
system.
Important Micro-Partitioning concepts
include:
- Processing units of capacity
- You can configure processing capacity in processor increments
of 0.01. You must assign a minimum processing capacity to a micro-partition.
The minimum processing capacity depends upon your hardware and firmware.
The following list describes the processing capacity for different Power Systems™ servers:
- POWER5 and POWER6®
- 0.1 processors
- POWER7®
- See Shared processors (http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/p7hat/iphatsharedproc.htm)
- PowerLinux™
- See Shared processors (http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/p7hatl/iphatsharedproc.htm)
For more information about processing capacity,
see Use increased Micro-Partitioning limits on a Power® system running Linux (https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/wikis/home?lang=en#/wiki/W51a7ffcf4dfd_4b40_9d82_446ebc23c550/page/Use%20increased%20Micro-Partitioning%20limits%20on%20a%20Power%20system%20running%20Linux).
- Capped and uncapped mode
- Capped and uncapped processing modes determine whether processing
capacity can exceed entitled capacity when more resources are available
in the shared-processor pool.
- Virtual processors
- A virtual processor is a representation of a physical processor
that is presented to the operating system, which is running in a micro-partition.
- Virtual processor folding
- Virtual processor folding puts idle virtual processors into a
hibernation state to conserve physical processor resources.
- Dedicated processors
- Dedicated processors are whole processors that are assigned to
dedicated-processor logical partitions (LPARs). The minimum processor
allocation for an LPAR is one whole processor; the maximum is the
total number of installed processors in the server.
- Shared-processor pools
- Shared-processor pools aggregate processor resources. Shared-processor
pools have different characteristics in POWER5 servers than in POWER6 servers and later. POWER5
servers support one shared-processor pool that is called the physical
shared-processor pool. POWER6 servers
and later support several shared-processor pools that are called multiple
shared-processor pools.
- Shared dedicated capacity
- On POWER6 servers and
later, you can configure dedicated-processor partitions as donating
partitions, which donate unused cycles to the shared-processor pool.
For more information about Micro-Partitioning, see the topic
corresponding to your system in the Systems Hardware Information Center.
- POWER5 systems
- Micro-Partitioning (http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/topic/iphb2_p5/virtmicropart.htm)
- POWER6 systems
- Micro-Partitioning technology
(http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/topic/arecu/iphb1microlpar.htm)
- POWER7 Systems™
- Micro-Partitioning technology
(http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/topic/p7ecu/iphb1microlpar.htm)
- PowerLinux systems
- Micro-Partitioning technology
(http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/topic/p7ecul/iphb1microlpar.htm)