TWY does IBM own Samsung?..."...Samsung’s Alpha EV68 chip yields...."
I like anything that would put Merced to Shame.
Milo
"Shannon knows Compaq Compaq Project # 12U4-0700A-WWEN May 19, 2000
Shannon Knows Compaq
An Independent publication not affiliated with
Compaq Computer Corporation
ISSN 1079-4379
is published at least twice monthly by
Terry C. Shannon
135 Leland Farm Road
Ashland, MA 01721
+1-508-881-5563 (voice, no fax)
shannon@world.std.com (email)
acersoft.com (web)
Copyright © 2000 Terry C. Shannon
To order reprints go to: compaq.litorders.com
continued from page 1
will fully exploit the OpenVMS Galaxy
Software Architecture and the NUMA-fied
Tru64 UNIX “Zulu” release.
The Price is Right
Owners of AlphaServer 8400 systems
and rival enterprise servers should find
the GS-Series pricing structure to be
very attractive, especially at the low end.
GS-Series prices start at under $100K for
a uniprocessor GS80 system; additional
CPUs cost $15K apiece and memory
ranges from $11K for a 1GB module to
$53K for the 4GB module that will be
available in the third quarter. (Five years
ago, a 1GB AlphaServer 8400 memory
module cost over $100K!) Accordingly,
an 8-CPU GS80 with 4GB of memory
should cost about $225K plus storage.
The GS80 entry system is slated to be-gin
shipping in the third quarter.
An entry GS160 system with one CPU
lists for $241K; additional CPUs for the
GS160 and GS320 go for $23K each.
Hence a 16-processor GS160 will start at
around $600K. A uniprocessor GS320
lists at $551K; populated with 32 CPUs
and 32GB of memory the system will go
for about $1.6M. GS160 and GS320
systems begin shipping in June with full
volume production expected in the fall.
Max Headroom
The GS-Series is designed for a market
life of at five to six years, a near-eternity
in the enterprise server marketplace over
its lifespan. The GS-Series architecture
is compatible with processors running at
104MHz speed increments. SKC be-lieves
Compaq has targeted 939MHz or
1043MHz EV68 CPUs for the first
WildFire refresh. The speed of the first
CPU upgrade will be predicated on
Samsung’s Alpha EV68 chip yields; but
it’s safe to assume that WildFire will be
running ~1GHz Alpha CPUs within the
next 12 months. IBM plans to start
shipping copper-based EV68 parts in
mid-2001; these CPUs could boast
speeds of up to 1250 MHz.
Since the new GS-Series systems will be
upgradable to EV7 and EV8 processors,
future systems could offer as much as
twenty times the performance of the first-generation
products. When EV7 proces-sors
become available in ~2002, their
on-chip “glueless SMP” logic will en-able
Compaq to increase the maximum
CPU count of a GS-Series system from
32 to as many as 64 processors. (GS-Series
owners will be able to upgrade
their systems to the EV7-based
“Marvel” architecture by replacing the
QBBs, Global Switch logic, and memo-ry
in their existing systems).
Given the near-linear scalability of the
GS-Series architecture, doubling the pro-cessor
count should virtually double
system performance. And if Compaq
achieves its goal of increasing the trans-action
processing throughput of an Alpha
CPU by a factor of 10 from the current
EV67 implementation to an 8-wide EV8
with simultaneous multithreading (see
“A Tale of Two Architectures: Alpha
vs. Itanium,” this issue), WildFire will
gain an additional tenfold performance
improvement. As a point of comparison,
the incumbent AlphaServer GS140 offers
about four times the performance of the
original AlphaServer 8400 5/300 intro-duced
in April 1995. A twentyfold per-formance
boost over the life of an enter-prise
server can be very compelling: just
ask a Sun UE10K customer facing a
near-term upgrade to Sun’s next-genera-tion
Serengeti technology.
The actual performance improvement
over the GS-Series service life could be
significantly higher. Given Compaq’s
plans to increase the maximum CPU
count in a GS-Series system to 64 pro-cessors
when EV7 technology becomes
available, and given the anticipated per-formance
improvement attributable to the
simultaneous multithreading architecture
in the EV8 Alpha processor, we believe
the GS-Series will have an “in the box”
growth capability of at least 25x. And by
cabling multiple cabinets together,
Compaq could field even larger cache-co-herent
NUMA SMP systems. With EV7
technology, 128-way systems are feasi-ble.
With EV8 processors, the architec-tural
limit increases dramatically: a 256-
way or larger system is not beyond the
realm of possibility. All in all, the Al-phaServer
sales force has a Marvel-ous
investment protection story.
Book ‘em, Compaq!
As of May 16, a significant number of
customers—92 percent of which are in
the installed base—have bought into the
story: Compaq had 237 Day One orders,
plus an additional firm order for 100 sys-tems
to be delivered in ~2001. The ma-jority
of the initial orders are for GS160
and GS320 configurations, and average
system price is ~$500M sans storage
and services. Accordingly, Compaq re-mains
confident of achieving its 2H00
WildFire revenue goal of $1B. Going
forward, the platform should produce at
least $2B in incremental revenue in
2001. Once Compaq addresses the sig-nificant
pent-up demand in the installed
base, we expect the firm to boldly go
where no Compaq has gone before—and
where no DEC has been in quite a long
time—into highly lucrative markets now
dominated by rival server vendors.
It’ll Spread Like, Well, WildFire
SKC believes the popularity of Com-paq’s
new GS-Series will spread like,
well, WildFire. We are confident the
GS-Series rollout will reset marketplace
perceptions and customer expectations.
The new GS-Series will build on the
success of the TurboLaser platform by
providing customers with a modular,
partitionable, and highly scalable enter-prise
server. The combination of power-ful
Alpha processors and fast switches
target performance levels surpassing sys-tems
from Sun, IBM and HP. Since the
new GS-Series will be upgradable to
faster Alpha CPU technology and larger
processor counts, we believe that Wild-Fire
represents a uniquely compelling
long-term investment for installed base
customers and newcomers alike. ?"
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