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IBM demos BladeCenter using future Power4 variant

Next year's model

ComputerWire: IT Industry Intelligence

With Sun Microsystems Inc talking more and more about the benefits of blade servers as it readies its own entry in this nascent product segment, IBM Corp is keep to keep the excitement building for its own BladeCenter servers, which were announced in September and which are expected to start shipping in early December,

writes Timothy Prickett-Morgan.

To that end, IBM has begun demonstrating a version of the BladeCenter machine supporting as-yet-unannounced blades based on a future derivative of the Power4 processor.

Only a month ago, IBM executives were hedging on whether or not it would deliver a Power4-based blade for the BladeCenter machines, and the demonstration is not, say our sources, an indication that IBM actually will deliver a Power4 blade to the market any time soon. IBM wants to demonstrate that it can do it, if and when enough customers ask for these blades; such a product has to have a certain level of support for it to be worth IBM's while to certify the AIX software stack for running on the BladeCenter machines. Ironically, IBM hedged for support on another product - the "Project Monterey" 64-bit implementation of Unix for Itanium processors - that would have obviated the need for Power4-based blades had IBM actually shipped AIX for Itanium and set about to put Itanium processors in the BladeCenters. As it turns out, sticking with the future Power4 chips for AIX blades will probably be a much smarter move for the long run.

The BladeCenter is a 7U form-factor chassis that can house up to 14 two-way server blades, yielding a total of 168 processors in a standard 42U rack. The chassis has an internal Gigabit Ethernet backplane that the blade plugs into, and also includes Ethernet switches and, in the future, will have Fibre Channel and InfiniBand switches as options. The BladeCenter H20, which plugs into the chassis vertically, is based on the ServerWorks Grand Champion-LE chipset and can have one or two "Prestonia" Pentium 4 Xeon processors, which are equipped with 512KB of integrated L2 cache memory and which run at either 2GHz or 2.2GHz. The HS20 blades supports from 256MB to 4GB of main memory. IBM will eventually offer support for the "Gallatin" Pentium 4 Xeon MP processors that are due next year from Intel as a follow-on to the "Foster" Xeon MP processors that began shipping this year. The Fosters have a relatively low clock speed compared to the Prestonias, and do not support hyperthreading either, which helps boost performance, so the Fosters are not exactly popular with server makers at this point. IBM will also eventually deliver BladeCenter blades that are based on Intel's Itanium 2 processors - either the 1GHz "McKinley" chips or the future 1.3GHz "Madison" follow-ons, whichever ones are current when IBM is ready to ship.

IBM has demonstrated the two-way Power4-based blades running Linux, and the blades are expected to support AIX as well. IBM has not said exactly what Power4 chip it is using in the blades. A two-way blade could be based on a single dual-core Power4-II chip, perhaps clocked down to 1GHz so it doesn't overheat. This chip has a lot of connectivity for SMP configurations on the chip, however, and that is unnecessary for any entry server, blade or otherwise. Or, IBM could employ the PowerPC 970 chip that it was showing off a few weeks ago. The PowerPC 970 is a derivative of the Power4 that is aimed at desktop and entry servers. It clocks higher and runs cooler than current Power4 chips, and it is widely expected to be used in Apple Macs and in entry pSeries servers supporting Linux and AIX operating systems. IBM could have another derivative of the Power4 chip in the works, too, that we have not yet heard of.

No matter what processor IBM uses in the Power blades for the BladeCenter, the Power blades will plug into the same chassis alongside its Intel-based blades, and all of them will be manageable from the same console. IBM sources say that the company does not plan to ship them in 2002, and the expectation is for IBM to ship them sometime in 2003. That IBM's claim that demand is not yet there for a Power4-based blade is certainly true, but it is also convenient for IBM if it is indeed waiting for the PowerPC 970 to get into volume production, which isn't expected until around mid-2003. If IBM is using this chip in future blades, it very likely cannot get them out the door any faster than that, which means that IBM has to manage expectations and try to stoke down demand until it can ship the product. In the meantime, SPs and customers wanting BladeCenter machines can start with their Linux and Windows applications and tell IBM to get in gear with Power4 blades for AIX.

If IBM really wanted to be crafty, it would create an UltraSparc-III blade and maybe a PA-RISC blade for the BladeCenter and get into some real trouble. Customers with vast numbers of incompatible servers running myriad flavors of Windows, Unix, and Linux would probably love such a network consolidation box. To be sure, IBM could simply put out support for Solaris 8 on the current Xeon blades and support HP-UX on Itanium blades. A blade server is a network in a box, and none of the blade vendors seems to really get what that means. Maybe it is time for some enterprising upstart to take the lead and create a line of blade servers that can support all the popular operating systems on their native processors. timpm@computerwire.com

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