Gerald & Intel Investors - Several Key Statements from Intel's Pentium III Xeon Launch today:
"Arthur Kerins, an associate director at Barclays Capital in New York, said his company had seen a performance increase of 32 percent vs. Pentium II on two-way Compaq ProLiant servers running Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server and Oracle Corp. applications.
"That's really astounding," Kerins said. "For a 10-minute chip change, it's really worth it."
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"Another Pentium III customer is using Silicon Graphics Inc.'s recently announced four-way Silicon Graphics 540 workstation to design engine blocks for automobiles. With the new chip, the customer was able to improve performance by about five times, helping it to better design the blocks by predicting stress points that would need additional reinforcement, Intel officials said."
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"As far as future chips are concerned, Miner said the 64-bit Merced is "right on track" and will be due to OEMs in sample form this summer."
Paul
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zdnet.com
Intel pulls out the stops for Pentium III Xeon By Carmen Nobel and John G. Spooner
NEW YORK -- Four-leaf clovers were out-hyped by two-way workstations, four-way servers and eight-way chip sets this St. Patrick's Day, as Intel Corp. officially announced both its Pentium III Xeon processor and the long-awaited Profusion chip set.
The new Xeon chip, previously code-named Tanner, will be ready to ship this week. Initial shipments will run at 500MHz, with 512KB, 1MB or 2MB of Level 2 cache.
The chip works in two-, four- and, eventually, eight-processor servers and workstations. A 550MHz version will be available with 512KB of Level 2 cache by mid-April, with 1MB and 2MB versions due later in the third quarter, Intel officials said here today at a press conference at the Chelsea piers.
Initial testing by application and hardware vendors has shown up to a 30 percent performance increase over the Pentium II Xeon, officials said.
"All of these guys are able to solve real problems," said John Miner, vice president and general manager of Intel's Enterprise Server group. "It's really cool."
The usual cadre of OEMs -- Dell Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Compaq Computer Corp. and several others -- were on hand to show off systems based on the new chip.
Arthur Kerins, an associate director at Barclays Capital in New York, said his company had seen a performance increase of 32 percent vs. Pentium II on two-way Compaq ProLiant servers running Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server and Oracle Corp. applications.
"That's really astounding," Kerins said. "For a 10-minute chip change, it's really worth it."
Make way for eight-way
The eight-way Profusion chip set, which is based on the 500MHz Pentium III, won't be ready to ship until May, Intel officials said, meaning that server vendors won't be able to ship systems based on the chip set until June.
As reported earlier, NEC Computer Systems Division plans to beat the rush later this month with an eight-processor system based on its own Aqua II chip set -- essentially two four-way chip sets linked together. For its part, Hitachi PC Corp. will also offer an eight-way system based on its own version of Profusion.
"I think it's great," Miner said of those two vendors' efforts, although NEC and Hitachi officials said Intel wouldn't let them demonstrate their eight-processor systems at today's event.
Barclays' Kerins said he was in no rush to buy an eight-way system.
"I don't see that as a massive gain right now," he said. "Scaling on NT levels off after a couple of processors. If I start seeing applications that are really written for four-way and eight-way, then I'll look at buying one."
Miner said Intel has been doing a lot of work with Microsoft to make an eight-way server worth the purchase.
"I don't blame the world for being skeptical," he said. "But eight-ways will scale."
Elsewhere on the server front, Miner said Intel is still in talks with HP, Compaq and IBM to come up with a compromise on switched fabric I/O architecture. Currently the two camps have two different architectures, both due at the end of next year.
"We're still talking," he said. "It's not as far along as we'd like it to be."
As far as future chips are concerned, Miner said the 64-bit Merced is "right on track" and will be due to OEMs in sample form this summer.
Workstations get a boost, too
Intel's rollout of the Pentium III Xeon wasn't just about servers, however. Workstations got a boost from the new chip, too. Indeed, numerous vendors are shipping new workstations based on the 500MHz version.
While the same caveats apply to the Pentium III Xeon for workstations as apply to the Pentium III for desktops -- i.e., applications need to be "optimized" to show large gains in performance -- several workstation vendors were on hand today showing off significant performance gains derived from the new processor.
Dell, which is shipping the new chip in its Precision line of desktops, demonstrated a graphic application from Unigraphics Solutions Inc., increasing performance by 30 percent by updating the graphics driver to work with the chip.
Another Pentium III customer is using Silicon Graphics Inc.'s recently announced four-way Silicon Graphics 540 workstation to design engine blocks for automobiles. With the new chip, the customer was able to improve performance by about five times, helping it to better design the blocks by predicting stress points that would need additional reinforcement, Intel officials said.
"End users benefit because their designs are more robust," said Raghu Murthi, director of workstation product marketing for Intel.
Next on the agenda?
The next step for Intel, aside from delivering higher clock speeds, will be to expand systems' capabilities through graphics and memory technologies, Murthi said.
"Our goal as we go forward is to go to 4X AGP [four-speed Accelerated Graphics Port] and at least look at doubling memory bandwidth," he said. "By the end of the year, you'll be looking at the benchmarks we released today and say this is old stuff."
A number of workstation vendors on hand at the launch discussed their shipping plans.
HP, for example, will incorporate the Pentium III Xeon into several Kayak XU workstation models.
One will include the 500MHz version of the chip, a 9.1GB hard drive and a Matrox Millennium G200 graphics card for about $4,300, company officials said.
IBM will offer the new Xeon chips on its IntelliStation Z Pro workstation. That system, which will also offer IBM's own Fire GL 1 graphics board, will come in single- and dual-processor configurations.
Intel, of Santa Clara, is at www.intel.com. |
