Intel releases low-cost Clear Bay server platform
243074
Intel has developed a white-box blade server based on standardized components, instead of specialized parts usually used to produce such systems.Called Clear Bay, the server is based on the&#160;Server System Infrastructure Forum&#39;s Modular Server Specification&#160;announced last July.The Modular Server Specification lays out standards for blade servers and, where possible, aims to use off-the-shelf components for connectors, power supplies and heat sinks. The aim is to bring down the cost of blade servers -- which are denser and generally easier to manage than rack-mount systems -- and make them available to a wider range of users, including small businesses.Clear Bay is based on a 6U-high blade chassis that can support up to six two-way server nodes running dual-core or quad-core Xeon processors, 14 hard-disk drives, two storage-control modules, a management module and two Ethernet switch modules. The platform includes Intel&#39;s Multi-Flex Technology, a set of management and storage technologies. Among the technologies included are virtual storage mapping, integrated storage-area network, diagnostics, and single sign-on, among others.Officially known as Intel Modular Server Products, the Clear Bay platform is intended to be assembled and sold by local manufacturers instead of top server vendors like IBM or Hewlett-Packard.Pricing for servers based on the Clear Bay platform was not immediately available. But Intel expects pricing for Clear Bay servers to be roughly similar to rack-mount servers based on the same processor and configuration.&#160;
498001
Highlights of this year's Intel Developer forum included new 45nm Penryn and Nehalem CPUs, upcoming server and enthusisat motherboards, $200 laptops, and a talk with Gordon Moore. Here's what it all looked like.
600385
InfoWorld - Rackable Systems has added to its line of NAS solutions with its new S3116-NAS server appliance. The new NAS server is designed for datacenters looking for a high-performance SATA system at an affordable price, according to Geoffrey Noer, senior director of storage products at Rackable Systems. &#8220;Companies using expensive Fibre Channel-based storage can migrate older projects to a lower-cost Rackable Systems NAS,&#8221; Noer said. Other uses include disk-based backup, small and medium business workgroups, and applications such as seismic processing and video rendering, he said.
352126
Intel Corp. introduced its latest microprocessor for server computers Monday, one of a trio of new chips the world&#039;s biggest semiconductor maker is counting on to regain market share lost to Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
633253
(InfoWorld) - Intel plans to unveil a version of its Xeon processor on Wednesday that's designed for high-end servers with multiple processors -- setting the stage for a showdown with rivalÂ Advanced Micro Devices' upcoming quad-core Barcelona chip. The Xeon 7300 chips, called Tigerton, are the first quad-core processors from Intel designed to be used in servers with four or more processors, a relatively small but lucrative segment of the server market. Previously, the Xeon processor for this segment of the market had two cores, despite the availability of quad-core Xeon chips for single-processor and two-way servers. The new chips offer significantly better performance compared to their predecessors,Â Intel's Xeon 5300 chips, said Adesh Gupta, regional platform architecture manager at Intel Asia-Pacific's Server Platforms Group. "Across the spectrum of different applications, we're seeing really, really good performance," Gupta said. Benchmarks run by Intel showed significant gains for many enterprise applications, including SAP's ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, Gupta said. The 7300 series chips can handle roughly 82 percent more ERP users and 92 percent more database transactions than the 5300 chips, he said. The 7300 is part of theÂ Caneland chip package, which also includes Intel's 7300 chip set, known as Clarksboro. The new chip set has four 1,066MHz interconnects that are linked to an individual processor, helping reduce latency between the processors and main memory. Caneland is the last release expected from Intel before AMD announces the availability of its Barcelona server chips on Sept. 10. Barcelona is widely expected to offer significant performance increases over AMD's existing dual-core server chips, and should mean tighter competition with Intel in the server space. Intel will initially offer six versions of Tigerton. At the top of the range is the X7350, a 2.93GHz chip designed with 8MB of shared on-chip cache and a thermal design power (TDP) of 130 watts. TDP is the highest sustainable level of power for applications that Intel expects to be run on the chip, and the number describes how much heat a system must be able to dissipate from the chip. Intel is also offering several Xeon 7300 chips with a TDP of 80 watts. The E7340 runs at 2.4GHz and offers 8MB of shared on-chip cache. The E7330 also runs at 2.4GHz, but has 6MB of cache. The E7320 and E7310 both have 4MB of shared cache and run at clock speeds of 2.13GHz and 1.6GHz, respectively. Intel will also release a 50-watt version that runs at 1.86GHz. The L7345 has 8MB of shared on-chip cache and is designed for blade servers and high-density rack servers. Two dual-core versions of the Tigerton chip, the E7220 and E7210, will also be available, running at speeds of 2.93GHz and 2.4GHz with a TDP of 80 watts. Both chips have a shared on-chip cache of 8MB and are designed for high-performance computing applications. Tigerton's improved performance doesn't come cheap. The processors are priced from $856 to $2,301 per chip in 1,000-unit quantities, a standard measure of processor pricing. The 7300 will also be the last server chip announced by Intel, before itsÂ upcoming Penryn chipsÂ are made available later this year. Made using a 45-nanometer process that will allow more cache to be put on each chip, the first Penryn server chips are expected to be released in November. Those chips are intended for use in single-processor and two-way servers. The Penryn server chip for multiple-processor servers is called Dunnington and will not be available until late 2008, Gupta said.
682068
TechWeb - The new server expected on Monday is built for companies who need an entry-level single processor server as a building block for high-performance computing clusters and applications.
535519
Hewlett-Packard has announced four entry-level servers for SMBs, along with updates to its remote management software.The servers are part of HP&#39;s ProLiant 100 series, aimed at companies with 100 to 500 employees. They are all two-processor rack-mount servers, with two 1U machines and two 2U machines. (The 1U refers to the height of the machine and is equal to 1.75 inches.)Rack-mount servers have lost the limelight lately to trendy blade servers, sales of which are growing at a faster clip, and even HP&#39;s vice president of marketing, Paul Gottsegen, who was charged with promoting the new rack-mount servers, advised customers to look closely at blades.&quot;When they see the blades, customers tell us there&#39;s an advantage in cooling, in cabling, in reduced power consumption and overall density, so the rack customers typically transition to blades, it&#39;s just a matter of customers in this market becoming aware of them,&quot; he said.Still, rack-mount servers account for a high proportion of sales despite their slower growth, and smaller companies tend to be more comfortable sticking with what they are used to, said Gordon Haff, principal IT adviser at Illuminata.Two of the HP servers are available now. One is the DL185 G5, a 2U system designed for high-capacity jobs like mail serving and video capture. It comes with up to 14 large-form factor drives and 10.5TB of storage, and it runs on one or two Opteron 2200 processors from AMD. Pricing starts at $1,749.The other machine on sale now is the DL160 G5, a 1U server that can act as a node in a high-performance computing cluster as well as a standard business server. It has two PCI-Express x16 2.0 slots and support for a faster front-side bus, and it runs one or two of Intel&#39;s quad-core 5400 &quot;Harpertown&quot; chips. Pricing starts at $1,399.The other two machines won&#39;t ship for another three months, HP said. They are the DL180, a general-purpose 2U server with three PCI-E slots and up to 12 large form factor drives, and the DL 165, which will be the first rack-mount server that can hold four 3.5-inch disk drives, according to HP. Pricing for those servers was not announced.HP has been doing well in the server market lately. In the third quarter last year, it sold more machines than second-place Dell or third-place IBM, although IBM earned the most revenue, research company Gartner said.Low-end servers are fairly commoditized, and there isn&#39;t a great deal that distinguishes one vendor&#39;s hardware from another, Haff said. &quot;Certainly, there are some differences in areas like management software, but for the most part, it&#39;s about the channels and the partners and what&#39;s offered around the server,&quot; he said.HP announced two Lights-Out management packages for the servers. They allow users to install software remotely and monitor the health of fans, power supplies and other components. A Lights-Out 100i Advanced Pack is $199 per license and a Select Pack is $99. Customers must also buy a Remote Management Card for $219.HP also announced two updated software packages for the machines. They are Citrix Access Essentials, for remote access to applications, and Exchange Server 2007, the latest version of Microsoft&#39;s e-mail server software.
738979
Three midrange servers featuring the new chip will be shown at Intel Developer Forum.
2762
When Fully buffered DIMMs attack A recent benchmark comparing quad-core chips asserts that Intel Xeon-based servers have an edge in performance but are complete power hogs when compared to the dainty energy appetite of AMD Opteron-based servers.â¦
5575
Shhh, do you want to wake the baby? IDF Supermicro is showing off a new ultra quiet and low energy server blade at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this week.â¦
86432
Each skinny server houses eight processors. Plug a few together, and voila! A high-performance machine.
316822
Intel Corp  on Thursday  introduced high-end processors for computer servers to compete  with an upcoming new product from Advanced Micro Devices Inc  .
164110
A small, fully functional, 70-megabit static random access memory computer chip crammed with more than 500,000,000 transistors has been developed by researchers at Intel Corp.
94667
InfoWorld - Armed with a new form factor and its clustering management software, Penguin Computing on Wednesday launched an aggressively priced Linux-based blade server targeted at the lower end of the market -- a market recently entered into by Dell Computer.
512501
AMD Opteron servers prove more power-efficient than Xeon-powered servers in tests.
290104
Beleaguered server firm is working on a series of higher-performance processors it hopes will get profits back on track.
521193
Ten months after Intel shipped its first quad-core server processor, Advanced Micro Devices finally released a quad-core Opteron that the upstart vendor hopes to use to recapture its momentum in the server market.