AUSTIN - A start-up stacked with veteran industry players is hoping to give Intel-based server makers a run for their money with enterprise-class machines designed to ease the transition from 32- to 64-bit computing.
Newisys, founded two years ago by former IBM executives, has been demonstrating its first product, a dual-processor server that uses AMD's 32/64-bit Opteron processor. Opteron, code-named Hammer, is the processor AMD is bringing to market early next year in the hope of spiriting market share away from Intel's 64-bit Itanium.
"AMD made all the right decisions relative to compatibility, price/performance and the attributes we would like to see for [customers]," says Newisys CEO Phil Hester.
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Hester is a veteran of IBM, where he was CTO and vice president for the PC Division, and vice president of development for the RS/6000. He founded Newisys with Clay Cipione, a former vice president of development at AOL and director of workstation development at IBM. The company has landed $28 million in venture funding from Austin Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and AMD. Mike Maples Sr., former senior vice president of products at Microsoft, sits on the Newisys board of directors.
The Opteron processor has garnered a lot of interest because it runs 32- and 64-bit applications in native mode, unlike Intel's Itanium 2 processor, which runs 32-bit applications in a slower emulation mode. In that mode applications run only about half as fast as they would on a 32-bit server.
Users with enterprise resource planning or database applications will find the Opteron an attractive alternative to the Itanium, AMD says. Customers will be able to run 32- and 64-bit code without the performance degradation they would see in emulation mode.
John Humphries, senior research analyst at IDC, says Intel's answer to 64-bit processing power is the Itanium, which requires a forklift upgrade rather than a simple migration. "With AMD's Opteron, customers can move to 64-bit when they are ready and when they want to," he says.
One potential customer is convinced that servers using the Opteron processor will be successful.
"I'm interested in Opteron for the same reason 286 users were interested in the 386," says Rob Landley, a lead programmer at storage and IP communications company WebOfficeNow in Austin. "It's faster for what I do now and it provides a future upgrade path when I'm ready for it."
The Newisys server, code-named Khepri, is the first in a series of servers with two to 64 processors the company will make. A 3U (5.25-inch-high) four-processor server, code-named Sobek, is in the works. (Khepri and Sobek, like the 'isys' in Newisys, are derived from the names of ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses.)
Newisys says that its server also runs 32- and 64-bit applications faster than conventional servers because it uses a model that speeds interprocessor communications.
"The machine uses a flat, cache-coherent memory-symmetrical multiprocessing model," Hester says. "With 16G bytes of memory you can use the memory as a cache instead of having to go to the disk all the time. You'll see factors of three to four times the performance [of conventional servers] for Web serving alone."
The Newisys server has 512M to 16G bytes of memory and one or two hot-swappable 36G-byte drives. It is managed remotely from a browser and can be linked to systems management frameworks from Computer Associates, Tivoli Systems and Hewlett-Packard.
Advantage in size
The size of the Newisys offering - it is a 1U (1.75-inch-high) rack-mounted server - also is an advantage, observers say. In contrast, HP's smallest Itanium 2 server, the rx2600, is twice the height.
"You won't see any 1U Itaniums in the short term," says Jamie Gruener, senior analyst at The Yankee Group.
The Opteron processor has a smaller surface space and CPU packaging, lower power consumption and heat dissipation, and a simpler design than the Itanium, Newisys says.
An Intel spokesman says the Itanium is not meant to be built into 1U servers suitable to Web serving applications, but for the second and third tiers of the Internet infrastructure.
The biggest hurdle to adoption of the Opteron might be the lack of a major vendors such as Dell, HP or IBM deploying it for their servers.
"One of Newisys' biggest challenges is to get a Tier-1 manufacturer to sign on to distribute its servers," Humphries says. Newisys is pinning its plans on distributing its servers only through these vendors.
Provider to Tier-1 OEMs
"Our strategy is to be a technology provider to the Tier-1 OEMs and the systems builders that service the white-box channel," Hester says. "Very clearly our goal is to provide technology to companies like IBM, Dell, HP, Fujitsu and Hitachi."
The company says it doesn't expect to sign any OEM deals until year-end, closer to the time the Opteron will be available.
Analysts are warming up to the success of AMD servers, especially because IBM and RedHat recently said they would support the platform.
"A major vendor has to test the water," Gruener says. "That will be the litmus test to see if there is enough customer interest. There's enough acrimony out there about price that if a vendor could come out with a server that was cheaper [than a 32-bit Intel box] and performed as well, users would take an interest in it."
According to Newisys, the server, which runs Windows NT/2000 and Linux, could sell for about $2,500. A similar Dell server sells for $2,750.
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