HP Itanium blade upstages processor

Despite a setback in Intel's processor road map that delays the introduction of its dual-core Itanium processor and rejiggers its plans for Xeon, systems vendors continue to update their Intel-based offerings. Last week, HP unveiled its long-awaited Itanium blade, and IBM was one of several vendors to announce servers built on dual-core Xeons for systems with four or more processors.

The new BL60p blade enables HP customers for the first time to run the company's HP-UX Unix operating system in a blade form. It can be ordered now for an expected January shipment starting at $5,700.

Today, HP ships blades with cooler-running x86 chips from Intel and AMD. Initially, HP had said its forthcoming Itanium blade, which can run up to 1.6 GHz with a 3-MB cache, would require a separate chassis because of cooling demands, but the company says the BL60p can fit into the same chassis as HP's other blades. As many as eight blades can fit into each BladeSystem chassis.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Despite a setback in Intel's processor road map that delays the introduction of its dual-core Itanium processor and rejiggers its plans for Xeon, systems vendors continue to update their Intel-based offerings. Last week, HP unveiled its long-awaited Itanium blade, and IBM was one of several vendors to announce servers built on dual-core Xeons for systems with four or more processors.

The new BL60p blade enables HP customers for the first time to run the company's HP-UX Unix operating system in a blade form. It can be ordered now for an expected January shipment starting at $5,700.

Today, HP ships blades with cooler-running x86 chips from Intel and AMD. Initially, HP had said its forthcoming Itanium blade, which can run up to 1.6 GHz with a 3-MB cache, would require a separate chassis because of cooling demands, but the company says the BL60p can fit into the same chassis as HP's other blades. As many as eight blades can fit into each BladeSystem chassis.

Blades, which are thin systems that slide side by side into a chassis like books in a bookshelf, are an exploding segment of the server market, as corporate buyers turn to these systems for data-center consolidation.

While blade server sales accounted for only 4% of the overall server market, dollars spent on blades grew 88% in the second quarter compared to the same period a year ago, according to IDC. IBM leads the blade server market, although No. 2 HP hopes the introduction of its Itanium blade will narrow the gap.

NEC introduced an Itanium blade last year, but HP is the first Tier 1 systems vendor to offer a blade based on Intel's 64-bit chip. HP developed Itanium with Intel and continues to be its strongest backer.

IBM also sells a Unix blade, but it is based on its lower-power PowerPC chip, rather than its Power5 processor. In addition, IBM highlights the blade's Linux support, while the BL60p is aimed at HP-UX workloads. Support for Linux and Windows is expected next year, HP says.

"The IBM JS20 and [the BL60p] really have different design points. The JS20 is lower power and cheaper, but in aggregate it can be very powerful," says Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata. "HP's blade . . . is more oriented toward commercial workloads."

The appeal of blade servers is that they enable users to consolidate hardware, as well as cabling and storage, because the servers share a backplane, Haff says.

"Now customers won't have to have an HP-UX rack-mount system and then a blade chassis of Linux or Windows servers in a mixed environment," he says. "This really lets somebody have a complete blade environment that could include x86-based Web servers, for example, and a database running on HP-UX."

Also last week, IBM upgraded its four-processor xSeries servers with the latest dual-core Xeon chip from Intel. The chip, formerly code-named Paxville MP, runs at speeds as high as 3.0 GHz and has a 667-MHz front-side bus.

IBM's updated xSeries 460, aimed at large databases and server consolidation, scales to 32 processors and is expected to be available this month. The xSeries 366 is aimed at corporate applications and server consolidation and also is expected to begin shipping this month.