November 13, 2001
As Alternative to Mainframes, IBM Plans
Line of Servers Using Intel's Foster Chips
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
International Business Machines Corp. plans next month to start selling a new line of powerful server computers using Intel Corp.'s Foster microprocessor, several months earlier than rivals will have the much-awaited new chip available in their machines.
IBM, Armonk, N.Y., will be marketing its new servers, code-named Summit, as alternatives to mainframe computers, according to analysts and customers briefed on the computers. Analysts said it marks the first time that IBM has attempted to market Intel-based systems as major computers for corporate data centers, where they compete with IBM's own mainframes and Unix-based Regatta servers.
Although IBM didn't rent a booth at the huge Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas this week, IBM salespeople are providing extensive details on Summit in hotel suites there.
Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, Pa., has been selling a mainframe based on Intel's Xeon chip for about a year, but other companies such as Compaq Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co., have held off, waiting for future, more powerful Intel chips.
Intel's Foster is a 32-bit chip that the company expects to be about 50% faster than the current generation of Xeon chips.
Intel has said it is shipping prototypes of Foster but said it doesn't plan to formally introduce the chip until the first half of next year.
IBM is making "an aggressive attempt to push mainframe design into the Intel world," said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst with Illuminata, a market research firm in Nashua, N.H. He said IBM designed the system so that it will keep running even after some parts are unplugged.
John V. Nelson, chief technology officer for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young LLC, a computer-services firm, says he plans to install Summit servers in all the company's development centers. "These are very, very important announcements" for customers who want to consolidate small Intel servers used for managing e-mail or printing, into a single larger system to save money and floor space, Mr. Nelson said.
IBM is currently showing a small system code-named Crusader that uses four of Intel's Foster microprocessors, but next year it expects to bring out systems that scale up to 16 processors. IBM's xSeries, based on Intel's current generation of Pentium processors, can only scale up to eight processors, and most customers use four-processor models because of difficulties making the larger systems work efficiently, analysts say.
People familiar with the situation said that IBM created what the industry calls a "chipset" to connect to the Foster processor, rather than waiting for a third party to introduce an industry-standard chipset. Vernon Turner, an analyst with International Data Corp., said that IBM's chipset works with the microprocessor so that the system is "balanced" with fast cache memory for temporary storage on the chip and enough bandwidth to use all the power of the Foster chips.
At Unisys Corp., which has sold about 500 of its Intel-based ES7000 systems, Peter Samson, vice president of sales development, said "we think IBM will help develop a much larger market." |
