It's also introducing a concept called Power System Pools, which lets customers use those 15 days -- and any other compute days they purchase -- across up to 10 different 780 or 795 servers. Essentially it gives customers more flexibility in how they allocate their processor resources, and, IBM hopes, makes them a bit more likely to choose IBM.

IBM doesn't usually publish prices for such high-end systems but the faster chips will come in at about the same price point as their predecessors, Sharma said. It will offer slightly better pricing on the Power 780 because it would prefer more customers bought its higher-end systems, he said.