Sun Unveils Intel Blades
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First Xeon blade servers today join Sun's lineup of AMD-powered blades.
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(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems is reaching for a larger share of the blade server market with Wednesday's launch of new models, including the first-ever Sun blades from its new alliance with chip maker Intel. Sun said the Sun Blade X6250 (starting list price: $3,695) is a two-socket server with dual-core Intel Xeon processors in each socket. It's the first Intel-based Sun server since the two companies announced in January aÂ deal for joint engineering, design, and marketingÂ of Intel's chips and Sun's Solaris operating system. Previously, the only x86 architecture processors Sun used were from Advanced Micro Devices. Sun also unveiled the Sun Blade X6220 ($3,995), a two-socket blade powered by dual-core AMD Opteron processors and the T6300 ($5,995) one-socket blade powered by Sun's own UltraSparc T1 processor. Sun also introduced the Sun Blade 6000 chassis ($4,995), which can hold up to 10 Sun blade servers and provide power, cooling and network connections to them. A user could install any combination of AMD, Intel and Sun-powered blades in one chassis. By offering Sun, AMD, and Intel processors in a blade form factor, "this is the most open and versatile blade platform out on the market," said Mike McNerney, director of Sun's blades server product line. "It is a compelling and interesting proposition." By using Intel inside its blades, Sun can now serve customers who favor the Intel processor platform, said Matthew Eastwood, group vice president for enterprise platform research at IDC. AMD made a good run at Intel with competitive processors in recent years but Intel has re-established itself as the market leader. "I think the biggest advantage for Sun is in the area of credibility in the x86 market. It really shows to enterprise customers that Sun is committed to x86," said Eastwood. Using Intel may also make Sun more competitive with blade server industry leaders Hewlett-Packard and IBM, he said, though they are far ahead in sales. Over the last four quarters, IBM sold $1.136 billionÂ worth of blade servers for a 38.9 percent market share, closely followed by HP's $1.127 billionÂ in revenue for a 38.6 percent market share, according to IDC numbers. Sun ranked fifth with only $100 million in blade revenue for a 3.4 percent share. That gap gives HP an opportunity to criticize Sun's latest news. "Sun is a non-player in blades and has failed to grow any appreciable market share," said Eric Krueger, an HP spokesman, in an e-mail. Noting that HP introduced its c-Class blade servers in mid-2006 at about the same time Sun introduced its SunBlade 8000 line, Krueger added, "HP has enjoyed a rather quick ascension to No. 1 in blade revenues and shipments while Sun owns a very small position of this rapidly growing market." But it's the rapidly growing nature of the blade market that, along with Intel deal, give Sun a chance to improve its share, said Eastwood. IDC forecasts the blade server market to grow to $11.3 billion by 2011 from $3.77 billion in 2007, and for blades to account for 28.8 percent of all server unit sales in 2011, up from 11.3 percent this year. "Sun has a long way to go but there's really no reason why a customer wouldn't consider Sun, particularly a traditional Sun customer or some emerging classes of customers like Web 2.0 companies," he said. "They are not really married to one supplier or another." The Sun-Intel deal also opens another front in Intel's competitive battle with AMD. Every Intel-powered Sun blade sold is a lost sales opportunity for a Sun-AMD blade. But AMD doesn't see it that way. "I suppose you could look at it that way, but if you look at the market it general we're continuing to grow our footprint in the marketplace," said Bruce Shaw, AMD's director of worldwide commercial and enterprise marketing. AMD is scheduled to launch a newÂ quad-core processor, code-named Barcelona, around mid-year.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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NEC (Nasdaq: NIPNY) has unveiled a blade server powered by the Intel Itanium 2 processor, combining 64-bit computing, InfiniBand capabilities and increased memory, and targeted at the high-performance computing market.
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IBM will soon begin shipping upgraded models of its HS20 and JS20 blade servers, including a new SCSI (small computer system interface) option for the HS20 that will double the number of SCSI blades that users can fit into a single chassis, the company
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New high-end dual-core Opterons will power servers.
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Dell has announced a dense blade server designed for enterprises with space-tight, hard-to-cool data centres. The PowerEdge 1855 can pack as many as 10 blade servers in a 7U-sized
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Intel ignited a new round of competition with Sun Microsystems and International Business Machines today by announcing plans to bring its most advanced chip-making technology to its Itanium line of business chips for the first time.
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Blog: Sun says its new blade servers are more energy efficient, and contain no plastic
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Processors will feature enhanced power management technology.
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As Sun Microsystems Inc. prepares to demonstrate a new high-performance computer Tuesday at a technology conference in Germany, it hopes that quad-core processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. that will power the computer arrive on time to deliver one of the machines to its first customer.
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(InfoWorld) - Adding spark to itsÂ Sun Fire lineÂ on servers, Sun MicrosystemsÂ is expected to announced its first x86-based quad-core systems Tuesday . The Sun Fire X4450 and Sun Fire X4150 rack-mount servers are the second and third Intel-based products Sun is releasing after the companies signed a partnership early this year.Â Sun shipped an Intel-based blade server, Sun Blade X6250, in June. The X4450 is a four-socket, 2U server powered byÂ Intel's quad-core Xeon 7300 processors, while the 1U Sun Fire X4150 is a two-socket server powered by Intel's quad-core Xeon 5300 processors. Both servers offer memory capacity ranging from 2GB to 128GB. Starting at $8,895, the X4450 server will ship worldwide in October, said Rebecca Tong, product line manager at Sun. The X4150, starting at $2,995, will ship in the U.S. this month and worldwide in October. The X4450 and X4150 will also support Intel's 7200 and 5100 dual-core processors, respectively. The servers will ship with the embedded Lights Out Manager, a system controller that helps users manage and administer servers. The servers will run either Sun Solaris, Linux, or Windows 2003 OSes and support VMware's virtualization software. Sun is looking to add support forÂ Microsoft's Virtual Server virtualization software, Tong said. Targeted at organizations that need performance and energy efficiency, the servers offer better size, performance and energy efficiency than competing products, Tong said. Sun's rivals in the x86 server space include IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell. The servers not only nurtures Sun's ties with Intel, but also provides more choice to customers looking to buy x86-based servers, said a Sun spokeswoman. Sun has strong ties with AMD, which recently announced its Barcelona quad-core Opteron chip. Sun will announce servers using the Barcelona chip in the future, the company said. Sun already offers the multicore UltraSparc T2 processor which has up to eight cores per processor. Developers and staff at Eastern Michigan University have benefitted from the X4450 server, said Bill Heilman, a platform specialist at the university. Equipped with four quad-core Intel Xeon 7300 processors and 64GB of RAM, the server has provided the virtualization environment the university was seeking and is especially powerful in the Unix environment, Heilman said. The university is running VMWare ESX Server beta virtualization software and Solaris 9 OS on the X4450. Additionally, the server's slim footprint has provided additional benefits. "Not only is it small, it uses a little less juice," he said, which will save the university money on electric bills, Heilman said.
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InfoWorld - As Sun Microsystems prepares to demonstrate a new high-performance computer Tuesday at a technology conference in Germany, it hopes that quad-core processors from Advanced Micro Devices&#160;that will power the computer arrive on time to deliver one of the machines to its first customer.
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Intel Corp  on Thursday  introduced high-end processors for computer servers to compete  with an upcoming new product from Advanced Micro Devices Inc  .
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(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems onÂ Wednesday announced new additions to its server and workstation lines with the Sun Fire And Sun Ultra, the company said in a statement. The company debuted Sun Netra blade servers and claimed a nearly 20 percent performance improvement for its Sun Fire workgroup servers. They will use Sun's own UltraSPARC IIIi processors and Solaris OS. Sun said its new Ultra 25 Workstation sports a 300 percent increase in performance, and comes pre-installed with Solaris 10 OS, Sun Studio, Sun Java Studio Creator, and Sun Java Studio Enterprise. The company also said its Sun Fire T1000 system now featured 23 percent higher availability and up to 300 percent higher performance for disk operations. Sun said it will also announce "soon" new Sun Fire systems based on the Rev F version of Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processor.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Hewlett-Packard is beefing up its Integrity BladeSystems with a new model released last week thatâs intended to handle memory and CPU intensive applications.
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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;
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Sun Microsystems today took aim at two core pieces of its server strategy, announcing a new generation of UltraSPARC processors and a key software win for Solaris x86.