* HP and IBM are on board the Nocona bandwagon
HP and IBM, among other vendors, last week introduced servers that use Intel’s Nocona processor, which implements the x86 extension technology that lets users gracefully migrate from 32- to 64-bit applications.
Nocona is a 3.6-GHz chip used in dual-processor servers. Only SuSE and Red Hat Linux support it, since Microsoft delayed its 64-bit version of Windows last month.
The Nocona servers also ship with two other technologies – DDR2 memory and the PCI-Express interface – both of which speed performance.
IBM introduced two rack-mounted servers, a blade server, two pedestal-mounted servers and a workstation based on Nocona.
One rack-mounted server, the x336, is a 1U (1.75-inch) high server with four drives and 16G bytes of memory. The 2U (3.5-inch) high x346 has six drives and 16G bytes of memory. The HS20 blade server is a dual-processor server with 2G bytes of memory.
The x336 and the x346 replace the x335 and x345. The x336 starts at $2,210 for a system with 512M bytes of memory and a 2.8-GHz processor. The x346 starts at $2,340. The blade server starts at $3,660.
Of the pedestal-mounted servers, the x226 and x236 replace the x225 and x235. They start at $1,260 and $2,140, respectively.
The IBM servers incorporate IBM’s Xtended Design Architecture (XDA) feature, which brings mainframe-like capabilities to the x86 family. Part of XDA is Calibrated Vectored Cooling, which pushes air through the server to keep it cool.
HP introduced a similar range of servers. The 1U and 2U servers are called the ProLiant DL360 G4 and the DL380 G4. The company’s two new pedestal-mounted servers are the ML350 G4 and the ML370 G4, and it also introduced a BL20p blade server. Pricing on the various servers ranges from $1,530 to $3,450. The ProLiant blade will be available in September. Pricing was not given.
Acer, Gateway, Hitachi, LinxNetworx, NEC and Verari among others are also shipping Nocona boxes.
