Power Processor Modes - IBM BladeCenter PS700 Technical Overview And Introduction

3.2 POWER processor modes

Although, strictly speaking, not a virtualization feature, POWER modes are described in this
section because they affect certain virtualization features.
On Power System servers, partitions can be configured to run in several modes, including:
POWER6 compatibility mode
This execution mode is compatible with v2.05 of the Power Instruction Set Architecture
(ISA). For more information, see:
http://www.power.org/resources/reading/PowerISA_V2.05.pdf
POWER6+ compatibility mode
This mode is similar to POWER6, with 8 additional Storage Protection Keys.
POWER7 mode
This is the native mode for POWER7 processors, implementing v2.06 of the Power
Instruction Set Architecture. For more information, see:
http://www.power.org/resources/downloads/PowerISA_V2.06_PUBLIC.pdf
Figure 3-2 shows how to choose the processor compatibility mode by editing the partition
properties of a logical partition from the IVM.
Figure 3-2 Configuring partition profile compatibility mode from IVM
Table 3-2 on page 83 lists the differences between these modes.
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IBM BladeCenter PS700, PS701, and PS702 Technical Overview and Introduction