IBM Previews New Server Architecture

IBM on Tuesday announced new System x and BladeCenter servers, which are based on a new server design that the company claims will boost application performance while reducing energy costs in data centers.

The EX5 servers take a step away from traditional x86 server architecture in which processors and memory are locked together. The new server architecture decouples memory from the processors into separate units, according to IBM.

That could help the memory and processor scale separately for faster application performance, while slashing down on storage and energy costs, the company said. IBM is previewing the servers at the CeBIT trade show being held in Hanover, Germany.

"All the new systems have improved energy efficiency in their designs across a wide range of components achieving substantial energy savings when compared to the current generation of similar servers," said Ronald Hagan, vice president of the System x business at IBM.

Read Full Article Here:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/190499/ibm_previews_new_server_architecture.html

Intel and IBM demonstrate 128-thread Nehalem-EX server

Cray Jaguar Takes Top Supercomputer Spot from IBM Roadrunner

After more than a year as the world’s fastest supercomputer, IBM’s Roadrunner system was knocked down to the second spot by Cray’s Jaguar. Cray’s XT5 system got a boost when the computer maker swapped out the quad-core AMD Opterons for the six-core “Istanbul” chips, ramping up the power to more than 224,000 processing cores. Sun and SGI also were represented in the top 10 of the Top500 list of the fastest systems.

Link To Article:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Cray-Jaguar-Takes-Top-Supercomputer-Spot-from-IBM-Roadrunner-861748

Could IBM be building "glueless" eight-socket systems?

Long time chip industry observer, Eachus, speculates on The Motley Fool:

Hmm. Even in the Intel presentation you linked, slide 15 talks about IBM's 5th generation X series chipset. I do expect IBM to sell standard 4xNehalem-EX boxes, but I think they will use their own chipset in larger systems. Could IBM just be designing an I/O chip of their own, and be building "glueless" eight-socket systems? Possible, but IBM has a lot of institutional knowledge about building multiCPU systems with various CPU ISAs. I'm fairly sure that they would take one look at Beckton and conclude that their existing technology could support two Beckton chips with a little work to convert to what is now called Quickpath. We are talking a few man-years to add Quickpath to their current X-4 chip, vs. hundreds of man years for a complete redesign. Which would you choose? ;-)

http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=28077140&sort=postdate