HP Puts Faster Opterons into ProLiants, Debuts Geode Thin Client

Published: March 15, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Ten years ago, Hewlett-Packard was in a fight to try to get ahead of rival Compaq Computer in the X86 PC and server racket, and it decided to break ranks with Intel and try to get some competitive advantage by putting Advanced Micro Devices' K6-2 processor in the first sub-$1,000 PC on the market. Fast forward a decade, and now HP owns Compaq and is putting X86-clone chips from VIA Technologies and now AMD into its thin clients, and it is the most aggressive seller of AMD's Opteron processors for servers.

To mark the tenth anniversary of its partnership with AMD, HP announced that the new dual-core, 2.6 GHz Opteron 185, 285, and 885 processors would be available in the three ProLiant servers and three BladeSystem blade servers that support the Opterons. This is not a huge announcement, as these things go, but it is an opportunity to rub Dell's nose in the fact that it does not yet support Opterons.

"We are delivering processor choice, and we get to give customers the best of both worlds," says Steve Cumings, group manager for ProLiant Opteron systems at HP. (If Dell was pushing Itanium machines at the high end, maybe it would be able to get away with such shenanigans? But, alas, Dell doesn't like the Itanium very much.) HP has been selling AMD processors in the ProLiant line since 2004, and has been an increasingly enthusiastic supporter. But as a key Intel partner, because of its high volumes in ProLiants and its dominant position with Itaniums thanks to the Integrity line, HP has a lot of slack. And the AMD-Intel antitrust lawsuit isn't hurting HP's bargaining position, either.

In any event, starting March 20, customers buying 1U ProLiant DL145, 2U ProLiant DL385, and 4U ProLiant DL585 servers as well as BL25p, BL35p, and BL45p blade servers will be able to order the new Opterons, which AMD announced last week just as Intel Developer Forum was getting under way. These processors run 200 MHz faster than prior Opterons, and offer from 4 to 15 percent more performance than the 2.4 GHz versions of the Opterons, according to AMD. HP has not announced pricing.

With Sun Microsystems gearing up to launch its eight-socket "Galaxy" Opteron servers, it was a good time to ask Cumings what his company's plans were for the ProLiant line beyond the four-socket DL585 rack-mounted and BL45p blade servers. And the answer is: Itanium. "We currently have no plans to go beyond four sockets," explains Cumings. "Once you go beyond four-socket machines, we're into a more pure 64-bit realm, and that's what we have Itanium-based Integrity machines for."

Further on the AMD front, HP will today announce that it has picked the Geode X86 clone processor as the kicker to the Transmeta Efficeon processor in its high-end thin client line. The demise of Transmeta caused some problems for HP, and according to Keith Martin, product manager for thin clients at the company, HP was just about sold out of the t5710 thin clients, which run Windows XP Embedded. So it has moved up the announcement of the Geode-based t5720 thin client kicker to coincide with its anniversary with HP.

According to Martin, about 2.6 million thin clients shipped last year, with about 40 percent of them being Windows CE machines, 20 percent being Windows XP Embedded, 20 percent being Linux, and the remainder being a mix of custom operating systems. While Wyse is the dominant thin client player, HP is the market share leader in the Windows XP Embedded part of the market, and therefore it wants to bring some more computing to bear because that operating system requires more oomph than Windows CE. (Windows XP Embedded also provides more functionality, so the trade-off is, for many customers, worth the extra dough.) The t5720 thin client announced today uses a 1 GHz Geode NX1500 processor, which is a 32-bit chip, and comes with up to 512 MB of DDR main memory and up to 512 MB of flash memory. It has a front USB port and a PCI expansion slot, too, so it can have PC-style peripherals even though it is a thin client being served, more times than not, by Citrix Systems Presentation Server or Microsoft Terminal Services. The t5720 is expected to cost $699 with 256 MB of memory. It is available in North America and Europe now, and will be available in the Asia/Pacific region shortly.