Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has become the first major vendor to offer a four-processor server based on Advanced Micro Devices
Inc.'s (AMD) 64-bit Opteron chip.
On Monday, the company will announce the ProLiant DL585, a 4U (18cm high) Opteron-powered sister product to its Xeon-based
DL580.
The new server will have two more PCI-X (Peripheral Component Interconnect Extended) slots than the 580, and will support
up to 64GB of memory -- 32GB more than the DL580, according to HP Group Manager for ProLiant Systems Steve Cumings.
It will also be less expensive than the Xeon system. An entry level two-processor configuration of the DL585 built with AMD's
fastest-performing 2.2GHz Opteron 848 processors will cost $11,999, Cumings said. A similar configuration of the DL580, based
on Intel's fastest processor -- the 2.8GHz Xeon MP -- will list for $15,798, he said.
Because of differences between Opteron and Xeon, however, the DL585 will not have the memory protection features of the Xeon
system. "Because of the Opteron architecture, you have the memory controller on the processor itself, so it's not actually
possible to deliver Hot-Plug memory in the way we've done it with the Intel processors," Cumings said.
The DL580's Hot-Plug feature lets the system replace a failed memory unit on the server, Cumings said.
High-performance computer users have embraced dual-processor Opteron systems, using them as inexpensive 64-bit components
in large computing clusters, but HP's four-way system may now extend Opteron's appeal into the enterprise, according to Mark
Melenovsky, an analyst with industry research firm IDC.
Four-way systems on the market today are typically designed for enterprise users running packaged applications, who have not
yet embraced the Opteron processor, Melenovsky said. "It's going to be an interesting battleground for AMD and for Opteron
against Intel," he said. "Users are strongly wedded to Intel and the Intel brand."
Opteron systems accounted for only about 800 of the 228,000 four-way x86 servers that shipped in 2003, Melenovsky said. And
while IDC has not estimated how many four-way Opteron systems will ship in the year ahead, it expects the total x86 four-way
market to grow to 245,000 units in 2004, fuelled in part by the new HP system, as well as a planned four-way Opteron server
from Sun, which is expected by the end of June.
Also on Monday, HP will announce three new pre-configured 32-node computer clusters based on its ProLiant servers. The clusters
will be available with either the Xeon-based DL140 and DL360 servers, or the Opteron-based DL145 server.
The clusters, called the HPC LC Series, will be priced starting at $67,829, HP said.
Additional processors for the DL585 will list for $4,699 each, HP said. A four-processor DL585 with 2GB of memory will list
for $21,397, the company said.
E-mail
Printer Friendly
Reprints
(InfoWorld) - In the litigious world we live in, deploying a unified communications platform in your enterprise could...
