IBM Shows Off AMD-Based eServer at ClusterWorld

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM is giving future customers in the high performance computing market a sneak peak at the future eServer machine that it will launch before the end of the year using Advanced Micro Devices' 64-bit "Hammer" Opteron processors. The machine is being shown at the ClusterWorld conference in San Jose this week.

Back at the April launch of the Opteron processors, IBM did not divulge any specific plans for using Opterons in its own servers. All the company's executives would confirm is that Big Blue plans to launch an eServer product using the Opterons and that IBM intends to put Opteron-based machines in the On Demand Supercomputing center it has established in Poughkeepsie, New York, to service customers who want to buy HPC capacity in a utility fashion.

IBM contends that the migration from 32-bit to 64-bit computing is a sensitive spot for HPC customers, and it intends to push Linux-on-Operton clusters as an alternative to Itanium-based clusters. Truth be told, all customers are sensitive to this transition, and IBM's partner for the xSeries, Intel, is sensitive to what its OEM partners say about the issue. IBM seems very careful about what it says and doesn't say about Itanium these days, and further seems to be testing out the Opteron market as much to gain some leverage over those who support Itanium as solve HPC customers' problems. This is how the computer racket works, so no surprises there.

Sources at IBM say that the machine will support up to two processors in an SMP configuration and will come in a black, rack-mounted case that has a 1U form factor. This machine will not be labeled an xSeries machine, which is an IBM designation for its Intel-based servers excepting the eServer BladeCenters, which are blade server chassis that will support Intel, Power, and possibly other processors over time. The future Hammer server will simply bear an eServer moniker with a model number.

IBM is not saying anything about the configuration of the Hammer server, other than to say that the machine will run either Linux or Windows in 64-bit flavors. IBM could be OEMing the box from another vendor or building the eServer in its own factories. IBM isn't saying, but the odds would seem to favor an OEM deal.

IBM earlier this year outsourced all of the manufacturing of its xSeries line excepting the "Summit" xSeries 440 high-end servers and "Xcalibur" BladeCenters. The AMD box would not seem to be so critical to IBM's future as these two boxes to warrant IBM actually making them itself.