* HP puts latest Pentium technology in its blades
HP last week upgraded three of its blade servers with the latest Intel Pentium processors.
The BL10e now has a 1-GHz ULV Pentium M processor with 1M byte of Level 2 cache and 266-MHz PC2100 DDR memory. The BL20p uses a 3.06-GHz Intel Xeon DP processor with 1M byte of Level 3 cache. And the HP ProLiant BL40p blade server now uses a 2.8-GHz or 2.0-GHz Xeon MP processor with 1M byte of L3 cache.
The BL10e and BL40p both have 400-MHz front-side buses; the BL20p has a 533-MHz front-side bus.
Further, HP announced the GbE2 Interconnect Switch for its p-Class blade servers, which will be used to connect blades with a network. The 24-port switch has been designed by Nortel specifically for HP.
HP also announced that its BL40p posted a result of 13,500 MMB2s on a Microsoft Exchange 2000 Benchmark, which simulates the workload customers would see in their messaging environments over an eight-hour day. MMB2 stands for MAPI Messaging Benchmark 2, a Microsoft benchmark.
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HP claims it is the only company shipping blades that use the 3.06-GHz Intel Xeon DP processor and is the only company other than Egenera shipping four-processor blade servers.
According to IDC, HP has a 55% market share in blade server revenue for the first quarter of 2003. The company has shipped more than 30,000 blades.
Separately, Egenera upgraded its blades to use the Intel Xeon MP processor operating at 2.8 GHz and 2 GHz. The company has several configurations of blades that use Xeon processors operating at 2.4 GHz to 3.06 GHz. All Egenera blades come in a 1U-high form factor and include hot-swappable blades.
