Infrastructure Briefs

SGI last week introduced a family of servers and clustering software suited for technical computing environments. The Altix 3000 family consists of servers that use Intel Itanium 2 processors and the Linux operating system. The company also introduced superclusters, sets of up to 64 Itanium 2 processors with up to 512G bytes of RAM that run a single Linux operating system. The superclusters use a proprietary clustering technology called NUMAlink, which makes use of the Non-Uniform Memory Architecture used in SGI's Origin servers to tie boxes together. An entry-level four-processor Altix 3000 server starts at $70,180 and is expected to be available this quarter. A 64-processor Altix 3000 starts at more than $1.1 million.

Polywell Computers is selling a rack server with dual Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices on its Web site. The PolyRaxx server is a 1U box with two 64-bit Opteron processors. It is based on the AMD-8000 chipset, which uses HyperTransport interconnect technology in a PCI-X bridge, an I/O hub and an AGP 3.0 graphics tunnel. HyperTransport is an interconnect technology used to move data at speeds up to 12.8G byte/sec between integrated circuits on a processor. Dual gigabit Ethernet ports connect the server to a company's internal network. Several operating systems will be offered with the server, including Microsoft's Windows 2000 Server, .Net Server and the 64-bit beta version of .Net Server. A 32-bit Linux operating system from Red Hat and a 64-bit beta version from SuSE Linux AG also will be available. AMD's Hammer architecture, which is the backbone of the Opteron processor, lets users run 32- and 64-bit applications and operating systems designed for the x86 instruction set on the same chip. The PolyRaxx server will compete against servers with Intel's 32-bit Xeon processor. The clock speed of the new chips and price of the server still are not set.

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SGI last week introduced a family of servers and clustering software suited for technical computing environments. The Altix 3000 family consists of servers that use Intel Itanium 2 processors and the Linux operating system. The company also introduced superclusters, sets of up to 64 Itanium 2 processors with up to 512G bytes of RAM that run a single Linux operating system. The superclusters use a proprietary clustering technology called NUMAlink, which makes use of the Non-Uniform Memory Architecture used in SGI's Origin servers to tie boxes together. An entry-level four-processor Altix 3000 server starts at $70,180 and is expected to be available this quarter. A 64-processor Altix 3000 starts at more than $1.1 million.

Polywell Computers is selling a rack server with dual Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices on its Web site. The PolyRaxx server is a 1U box with two 64-bit Opteron processors. It is based on the AMD-8000 chipset, which uses HyperTransport interconnect technology in a PCI-X bridge, an I/O hub and an AGP 3.0 graphics tunnel. HyperTransport is an interconnect technology used to move data at speeds up to 12.8G byte/sec between integrated circuits on a processor. Dual gigabit Ethernet ports connect the server to a company's internal network. Several operating systems will be offered with the server, including Microsoft's Windows 2000 Server, .Net Server and the 64-bit beta version of .Net Server. A 32-bit Linux operating system from Red Hat and a 64-bit beta version from SuSE Linux AG also will be available. AMD's Hammer architecture, which is the backbone of the Opteron processor, lets users run 32- and 64-bit applications and operating systems designed for the x86 instruction set on the same chip. The PolyRaxx server will compete against servers with Intel's 32-bit Xeon processor. The clock speed of the new chips and price of the server still are not set.

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