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To: Diamond Jim who wrote (76352)	3/15/1999 7:51:00 PM
From: Diamond Jim	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Compaq Plans Eight-Way Server Preview (03/15/99, 3:45 p.m. ET) By Mitch Wagner , InternetWeek Compaq plans on Wednesday to preview its upcoming eight-way Intel-based servers, the company's newest high-end PC systems. Houston-based Compaq will announce immediate availability of beta and evaluation units. The systems, code-named "Thunder" and "Lightning," will ship in June. The company said it also plans to announce a new four-way Pentium III Xeon server and cluster-management software tools. The systems are follow-ons to existing four-way systems, the ProLiant 6500 and 7000. They will be based on the Profusion technology from Intel subsidiary Corollary, which lets four-way modules of processors be linked together into an eight-way system. The systems will include 64-bit, 66-MHz PCI slots, twice the bandwidth of existing PCI servers. The machines have Level 3 cache that stores memory requests and minimizes their generating interrupts in memory, improving throughput. Thunder and Lightning support up to 32 gigabytes of SDRAM, which is faster than the EDO memory now in use in Compaq servers. The servers have 100-MHz I/O buses, and 100-MHz main memory and processor buses. Compaq said it plans support for Windows NT, Novell NetWare 5, SCO UnixWare, and Linux for the new servers. They're designed to run e-mail, groupware, enterprise resource planning, clustering, server consolidation, and thin-client applications. The servers will compete with midrange RISC/Unix and IBM AS/400 systems. Compaq said it expects to achieve performance of about 35,000 transactions per minute, about triple the performance of four-way Pentium Pro servers, and an increase over existing four-way Xeon servers, which run at about 22,000 transactions per minute. Thunder supports up to 21 internal disk drives, for a total of 378 GB of internal storage. Lightning is designed primarily to support external storage, though it does have four 18-GB internal disk drives. Both systems are designed to fit in rack-mounted environments. Thunder can also be configured in a tower. Compaq is far from the only company that will offer an eight-way system based on Profusion technology. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi PC, and IBM all play Profusion-based systems, and many -- including Compaq -- displayed prototypes at the Comdex trade show in November. Meanwhile, the new four-way system is the 6400R, a rack-mounted system. "We believe this platform is optimized for cluster environments. We think it's optimized for Internet, intranet, and e-commerce applications," said Tim Golden, director of enterprise server marketing for the industry-standard server division at Compaq. The small form factor of the 6400R is designed to optimize use of space. The systems will be available at the end of March, with pricing information available at that time. Finally, Compaq said it plans to introduce Insight Manager XE and Intelligent Cluster Administrator software, designed to help users manage, configure, and troubleshoot software remotely using a Web interface. Intel said it plans to introduce its Pentium III Xeon chip, and provide further details about Profusion, in San Francisco on Wednesday.