To: Paul Engel who wrote (72960 ) 2/5/1999 12:02:00 PM From: Tony Viola Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Paul, Re: "IBM will use Copper Metallization in a Merced Chip Set !"But it also mentions a new chip set that IBM is developing internally for their Trying to gain an edge in the voraciously competitive PC-based server market, year of unavailability. That usually even includes a certain amount of upgrades, which can be done concurrently, over an internet link nowadays (no downtime). Or, hardware upgrades are hot-pluggable in many cases, as stated. They mention PCI, most likely would also include power supplies and hard drives. Also included in the unavailability, of course, would be downtime due to failures. 8.7 hours unavailability for all reasons is extremely low in a year. Bottom line is that this is as agressive as it gets right now, right up there with the flagship of IBM, S390. All this and on a Windows operating system no less. Ov Vay! This product will bear very close watching.OnForever: A feature which is intended to extend the high availability capabilities regardless of how many customers may order. When the customer has the system, and wants to add CPUs over and above what he initially paid for, IBM configures them dynamically, over the link, and the customer pays for them at that point. How would you like this strategy to be used for Intel based servers, i.e., four or eight Merceds bought and paid for by IBM for each and every NT server motherboard they build? I don't know if they'll incorporate this into NT servers, but when they started talking hot plug CPUs for S390, this is what it turned into.
