The Four Hundred

Just as everybody was getting ready for the Fourth of July holiday, IBM announced the pSeries 630 "Regatta-LE" entry servers, its first small machines using the Power4 processor. IBM has announced these entry servers a little ahead of when it can actually ship them, on August 30, so it can build up a decent backlog of sales. The Regatta-LE servers will not be sold with an iSeries brand this year, but are expected in the iSeries line perhaps by early summer in 2003.

That August 30 date is an interesting one. That's when AIX 5L Release 5.2, the next generation of IBM's Unix operating system that is designed to support dynamic logical partitions akin to those supported in the iSeries line, will first start shipping. It is also when OS/400 V5R2, the next release of the iSeries operating system, will be available. Once the Labor Day vacation hits, in early September, IBM wants to have all of its new technologies announced and in the market, because then it will be time for the fourth quarter push. With customers edgy about spending on IT, and sales lead times stretching out because of the uncertainty in the economy, IBM has moved up its pSeries announcements to get customers and the channel ready for this push. IBM is offering such compelling price/performance improvements with the pSeries 630 servers--which offer from 20 to 40 percent better bang for the buck than existing pSeries and RS/6000 Power3-II and PowerPC S-Star servers, depending on the configuration--that the company undoubtedly believes it can sell a lot of these Regatta-LE machines to Unix and Linux server buyers.

And IBM wants to do just that, which is probably the main reason we aren't seeing the Regatta-LE servers in the iSeries line this year. For whatever reason, it takes longer for iSeries customers and resellers to absorb a new line of machines, and with revenues down sharply in the iSeries line this year, IBM seems disinclined to effectively cut that revenue stream by offering entry and midrange Power4-based iSeries servers. Such an announcement might stall sales for a month or more. Moreover, I don't think IBM can make enough Power4 chips, even the ones used in the pSeries 630s that run at the slower 1GHz clock speed, to sell them in both the pSeries and the iSeries lines. Sales of pSeries servers against competitive Unix and Linux machines from Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard are to a large measure dependent on having the latest technology and aggressive pricing, so IBM has to move its hottest stuff here. For a lot of iSeries customers, a CPW is a CPW, and they don't much care if they have the latest 64-bit processor available from IBM or one that is two generations back, so long as it gets the bookkeeping done. This is particularly true among entry server customers, for whom a Regatta-LE server is overkill. Similarly, the iSeries sales channel seems to have more trouble absorbing announcements with the same speed as the Unix market. When you add it all up, it's no wonder IBM isn't announcing Power4-based entry and midrange iSeries machines, and is sticking to selling the few hundred high-end iSeries Model 890 machines it can get out the door between August 30 and December 31 for that fourth-quarter push.

When they do make their way into the iSeries product line--perhaps as the Model 280 or Model 290, or maybe even the Model 800 or Model 810--the Regatta-LE machines will make what appear to be excellent iSeries machines, particularly if IBM can cut prices on the Power4 processors by the time they're put into the iSeries line. Within the pSeries 630 line, a two-way processor card with 8 DIMM memory slots and 32 MB of L3 cache memory is selling for $11,000. Call it $5,500 for each active Power4 core and its L2/L3 caches.

Running at 1GHz, a single Power4 processor core running in an iSeries server is probably rated at about 1,400 CPWs in a uniprocessor configuration and at about 2,400 CPWs in a dual-core configuration. A four-way will probably come in at about 4,300 CPWs. This is roughly the same performance that the iSeries is getting out of the S-Star Model 270 and Model 820 machines, so there is no compelling reason to launch iSeries versions of these servers unless customers are hankering for a 4U form factor rack-mounted iSeries machine, like the pSeries 630 is. (The p630 is also available in a tower configuration.) There is no easy way to reckon what an S-Star processor costs in the iSeries line, because of the hardware/software bundling in the iSeries, but IBM was charging $14,500 for a two-way 600 MHz S-Star processor card in the pSeries line and $24,500 for a four-way processor card. What is clear from these pSeries comparisons between S-Star and Power4 processors is that the Power4 processors offer similar or better performance, but for less. I have to believe that IBM will offer similar value to iSeries customers before too long, whether it means using faster S-Star processors in the existing iSeries frames or actually getting the iSeries line into full Regatta mode.

The tower version of the pSeries 630 will eventually offer up to two logical partitions, supporting either AIX 5L or the 64-bit implementations of Linux from Red Hat, SuSE, or Turbolinux. Logical partitioning support will not be ready on the pSeries 630s until the fourth quarter, however. The rack-mounted version of the pSeries Regatta-LE will have an outboard I/O chassis and will support up to four logical partitions. (Why the number of partitions is dependent on the outboard I/O is unclear.) IBM expects the commercial Linux distributors to start rolling out native Linux support on the pSeries 630 in the third quarter, following the debut of the machines. What this native Linux support means is that Linux can be the sole operating system on the box; AIX will not be required. It will be interesting to see how the pSeries 630s will stack up against Linux and Unix servers based on Intel's 64-bit 1GHz Itanium 2 (formerly known as "McKinley") processors.

A base pSeries 630 with a single 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of main memory, and 18 GB of disk capacity costs $14,120, regardless of whether it is in a tower or rack-mounted configuration.