Ibexx, and ALL, Article...OEMs Can Expect Merced Samples Later This Year...
techweb.com
(02/21/98; 12:18 p.m. EST)
By Alexander Wolfe, EE Times
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel Corp. is telling systems OEMs to expect first samples of its 64-bit Merced microprocessor in the second half of this year, EE Times has learned. Separately, Hewlett-Packard Co. is developing a proprietary core-logic chip set for Merced that will support up to 32-way multiprocessing, company executives said. HP will use the chip set as a key enabling technology for its own line of high-end, high-performance servers built around Merced. The company hasn't decided whether to offer the chip set on the merchant market.
Word of the dual Merced moves comes amid a renewed round of speculation over when Merced will appear. Intel has consistently stated that Merced, which is the first implementation of the company's highly parallel IA-64 architecture, will ship in 1999 and that it will be fabricated in a 0.18-micron process. An Intel official said last week that first silicon should be ready late this year or early next year. An Intel spokeswoman said the company remains "on track with production scheduled for the second half of 1999."
To get ready for Merced, engineers at HP are already gearing up their efforts. The focus is a family of high-performance Merced-based servers, code-named "Tahoe," which will rely on proprietary core logic for a leg up in performance.
"We'll be rolling our own [core-logic] chip set," said Jim Carlson, marketing manager for IA-64 systems at HP. "They're being designed right now."
Asked when the core logic will be ready, Carlson replied, "As soon as those [Merced] chips come in. Everything is on our PERT [i.e., scheduling] chart; they come together at the same time."
According to Carlson, HP's home-grown core logic is required if the Tahoe boxes are to stand out from the many competitors that will be equipped with the same Merced CPU HP is using.
"That's the big question--how do you differentiate," Carlson said. "Merced will indeed be a commodity CPU. What surrounds it is the core-logic chip set. We're calling it CEC, for core electronics complement. It does the I/O drivers, the access to memory and all the things that go into delivering systems performance. So we will differentiate on the chip set.
"Bear in mind that Intel's goal is the volume market," Carlson continued. "So they're going to go for a fairly generic [core-logic] chip set. Whereas our goal is the high-end marketplace and high performance, with 16-way or 32-way multiprocessing and high peripheral-to-memory throughput."
Carlson said HP hasn't made up its mind whether the chip sets will be solely for captive use in the company's own servers and workstations, or whether HP will offer the devices on the merchant market. "We haven't decided yet," he said. "That would be a real market-driven decision."
Still, HP could find lots of pent-up interest among designers of high-end and multiprocessing systems. Sources of core logic have shrunk over the past decade as vendors have found it difficult to overcome Intel's volume advantage. The result is a core-logic market dominated by chip sets with solid-but not sensational-performance.
And with Merced, few firms outside of Intel have enough design expertise to engineer core logic for the 64-bit CPU.
Another factor is likely at play in HP's decision to expend an ample engineering effort on its Tahoe systems. Namely, as processing architectures become more complex, server designers often pay little attention to the subsystems surrounding the CPU.
But tuning those subsystems is one of the few ways to stay ahead of the pack. "You can get better performance by focusing not on the CPU, but on subsystems--picking video board, memory and disk subsystem," Carlson said. "That will go on in spades in the high-end market that we're playing in. There's even additional variables you can bring to bear, like the operating system, multiprocessing support and middleware."
By supporting 32-way systems, HP could jump ahead of the multiprocessing crowd. Intel, for one, is aiming at eight-way Merced systems and recently acquired the multiprocessing-ASIC design group of NCR Corp. to help in that regard.
In addition to the core logic, HP is already at work pulling together the other elements of its Merced-based Tahoe systems.
"We don't have hardware prototypes yet, because without [Merced] you can't do that," Carlson said. "But everything's being simulated."
On the software front, there's been much speculation as to which operating system will run on Merced. Numerous vendors have already thrown their hat in the ring. Among others, Microsoft Corp. is preparing a 64-bit version of Windows NT; HP and the Santa Cruz Operation are jointly developing a 64-bit Unix; and Sequent and Digital Equipment recently said they'd field their own 64-bit Unix.
At HP, the first OS to run on Merced will be HP-UX. A 64-bit version of the OS was launched last November, and according to Carlson, it is "Merced-ready."
"We put many of the hooks in it we're going to need," he said. "Our HP-UX we expect will be our first mission-critical Unix on Merced." HP also plans to use Microsoft's 64-bit version of NT.
Equally important, HP recently ported a 750,000-line mechanical-CAD application to HP-UX and successfully ran it on a simulated implementation of Merced. "We ported it in stages, to see if we could do it," Carlson reported. "It worked fine. I think it's going to be simple to port apps to Merced under HP-UX."
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