I like enthusiastic better.
Any comments?
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Posted 01/03/2000 4:38pm by Mike Magee
Intel-Compaq deal maketh eight-way SMP market
The VP of Compaq US' x86 enterprise server division said today that there were no
circumstances he could contemplate where his company would ever use Rambus
memory in its range of servers.
Paul Santeler said that Compaq "has no plans to use Rambus in any of its servers,
and that it would use DDR and synchronous memory for the foreseeable future.
That came after Santeler's presentation on eight way servers where he explained
Compaq's plans to proliferate its own chipset -- co-developed with Intel -- for servers
using Willamette and Foster servers.
Santeler said: "The 8500 is a tough act to follow-- we're going to extense (sic) it out
with microprocessor refreshes. In Q1, 2001, we'll refresh it with Foster, which has a
400MHz quad pump front side bus. We'll have five memory controllers."
He claimed that the performance of the Willamette/Foster processor will deliver
double the performance of its current eight way offering, which uses the Intel Xeon
processor.
"Compaq will drive the price down, as it did with our 8500," said Santeler. When
Compaq delivers the Foster eight way in Q1 2000, it will cost roughly the same as the
current Proliant 8500, he said.
Santeler also rubbished IDC's projections that only 90 eight way servers would ship in
1999, and said that it had already seeded 120 eight way servers before the eight way
Profusion platform was introduced in last August.
He repeated Enrico Pesatori's figure that Compaq had shipped 3,500 eight way
Proliants since August, and although he absolutely refused to say how many Q will
ship this year, he displayed a hand gesture that suggested a 45 to 50 per cent
progression over last year's figures.
The Sabre board, which Intel ships to Compaq competitors, did not cut it, said
Santeler. "Compaq was very involved in making this market. When Sabre came out, it
was broken and we kicked butt because we were ready with our solution." Forty one
per cent of Compaq's eight way servers used six or more Xeon processors, he said.
Part of the reason for Q's success in the market, said Santeler, was that it had chip
level access to Corollary eight way server technology back in 1996, and when that
company was taken over by Intel, the chip level relationship continued. ©
AND
Posted 01/03/2000 4:46pm by Mike Magee
Compaq to go from eight Fosters to eight
McKinleys
Paul Santeler, VP of Compaq's x86 enterprise server division is perfectly sanguine
about where Intel's Itanium microprocessor stands, at least in the Houston roadmap.
According to Santeler, who was remarkably frank about Compaq's future roadmap in
a lunchtime interview: "Positioning Itanium is like positioning the new 454 engine from
Chevvy. The Itanium is a new engine and we'll use this engine in a new car when it
makes sense."
He said Compaq will bring Itanium to market in a four way system first, and targeted
specifically at specialised markets.
Compaq will use an eight way system based on Foster (Willamette) and then will
migrate that model to the future Intel McKinley model.
Interesting. Compaq reckons there is so much growth in the eight way market, as its
sales figures have proved, that it makes more sense to migrate the eight way model
to McKinley, kind of leaving Itanium for the Itaniates.
He said deals Compaq had brokered with Unisys would allow it to leverage 32-way
x86 based systems and that he and his team will pursue rival Sun relentlessly.
"The people I'm going after is (sic) Sun," he said. "We're a threat to Sun. Sun isn't a
threat to us." Compaq's switched fabric technology will, said Santeler, who has
worked there for 11 years, "drive volume economics into 32-way space".
And so our next question, and our next story, was What about Alpha then? ©
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