by Playfuls Staff |
2nd August 2006
First there was the three-letter alliance AMD-ATI. Now it’s another three letter alliance IBM-AMD, in the server market.[more]
The move made by IBM was apparently generated by…. Move Inc., which is looking to “consolidate its existing infrastructure onto a virtualized IBM BladeCenter system based on the AMD Opteron processor to help dramatically increase computing performance and datacenter power efficiency,” according to a press release.
IBM servers powered by AMD’s Opterons is not a surprising move though. Other giants in the server domain have also preferred the cost and energy efficiency of Opteron chips, among which Sun Microsystems, HP and Dell are big names for everyone.
The Opterons have ensured AMD a lot of positive reviews since the launch of the chips in 2003, and have also become one of Intel’s worst nightmares. The server market share for Intel has continuously dropped in the last couple of years and Opteron was the main responsible. Now, Intel tries to fight back with X5100, a dual-core server processor based on the new Core Microarchitecture, and previously code-named “Woodcrest”.
At a company event in New York on Tuesday, AMD chief executive Hector Ruiz joined IBM on stage to unveil the new System x3455, x3655 and x3755 rack-mount servers and the two-way Bladecenter LS21 and four-way LS41 blade servers.
According to IBM the new servers powered by Opterons will be available in the next three months, but their price will not be specified until the new "Rev F" Opteron is on the market. The “Rev F” Opteron is expected to be shown at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco, on August 15, and it will give IBM an advantage compared to SunFire server line from Sun Microsystems, which uses the “Rev E” chips.
The new family uses a collection of hardware and software technologies called Cool Blue, capable of running the servers with 40 percent better performance per watt than competing blade chassis, said Susan Whitney, general manager of IBM's System x server group.
The new server line from IBM and AMD is targeted at the business sector, which has an increasing hunger for high computing capabilities. The business performance computing is a new compute model that leverages high performance computing capability to more effectively meet general business needs, such as business intelligence, enterprise resource planning and more.
“Virtualized IBM BladeCenter systems powered by the AMD Opteron processor provide customers with a powerful, energy-efficient way to address growing datacenter power demands,” said Kevin Knox, vice president, Worldwide Commercial Business, AMD. “IBM and AMD collaborate to enable solutions that empower customers to meet both competitive and operational challenges, including effectively managing datacenter resources.”
"There are people around the world yet to use our technology and I expect them to start using it sometime in the near future," Hector Ruiz, AMD CEO, said yesterday. "IBM has been using our technology for some time."
The new system used by IBM servers reduces server heat emissions by chilling discharged air with a water-cooled door that covers the back of each rack. They also can deliver up to 21 percent greater performance within the same power envelope as previous generations.
They also cost less than comparable high-performance systems, IBM said.
“In a time when real estate and energy costs are weighing heavily on our clients’ IT decisions, IBM’s BladeCenter powered by the AMD Opteron processor is the one-two punch solution that solves the two most pressing challenges for IT managers today – datacenter management and power efficiency,” said Doug Balog, vice president and business line executive, IBM BladeCenter. “We are taking an aggressive approach to helping our customers deploy and maintain energy-smart datacenters with IBM innovation in blade technology and systems management tools, and helping our customers realize competitive performance advantages with a low total cost of ownership.”
IBM’s choice is by all means an important victory over rival Intel, which is struggling to sell the remaining deposit of server processors before the general acceptance of Woodcrest X5100 chips. Unfortunately for Intel, at the end of the second quarter, Advanced Micro had 26 per cent of the market for servers built on personal computer chips, more than double its share a year earlier, according to Mercury Research.
Moreover, the future line of server processors from Intel, code-named Tulsa and preparing four cores on a chip, is based on the energy-inefficient NetBurst architecture, which is one of the causes for which Intel lost so much market share in favor of AMD.
