Unisys Adds New Itaniums, Tweaks ES7000 Server Line

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Intel has rolled out its updated "Madison" Itanium 2 processors, and Unisys has turned into one of the big supporters of Itanium because of its desire to sell big Wintel boxes and, now, big Lintel boxes to customers who might otherwise buy RISC/Unix machines. So it comes as no surprise that Unisys is supporting the peppier "Madison" chips from Intel as well as tweaking its server line to allow better integration of Xeon and Itanium processors within a single ES7000 server.

Like other big server manufacturers, Unisys has gone to a cell board architecture for its big SMP systems, which scale from 4 to 48 processors in a single frame with the latest set of announcements. The updated Itanium 2 MP processors, which are designed for machines based on four-way or larger cell boards, are at the heart of a revamped ES7000 400 series product line.

Unisys last week launched three new ES7000s. The first is aimed at test and development environments as well as midrange customers who do not need a large Itanium 2 server but who want the benefits of the Itanium architecture (such as big main memories and excellent floating point performance). The ES7000 Aries 405 can have either 4 or 8 of the new Itanium processors, and it comes in a deskside tower. Unisys is only supporting the 1.6 GHz/9 MB cache and 1.6 GHz/6 MB cache versions of the updated Itaniums, which are the two most powerful of the Itanium 2 MP processors. Unisys is not supporting the slower 1.5 GHz/4 MB cache chip in this generation, but customers can buy the 1.3 GHz/3 MB or 1.5 GHz/6 MB versions of the original Madison chips if they want to use those processors. As with other architectures, all of the processors on the cell board have to match. The ES7000 405 supports up to 32 GB of main memory using 1 GB DIMMs and 64 GB using 2 GB DIMMs, and the machine has six PCI-X slots (two run at 133 MHz and four run at 100 MHz); it can have its I/O expanded to have up to eight 133 MHz slots or up to 16 100 MHz slots.

The ES7000 Orion 440 is a new top-end Itanium system that offers from 24 or 32 processors that are split into two distinct domains, with either 12 or 16 processors in each domain. The same Itanium processors that are supported in the ES7000 Aries 405 are supported in the Orion 440, including the new Madison 9 MB chips. Each domain in the ES7000 400 can support 64 GB of main memory with 1 GB DIMMs, and double that with 2 GB DIMMs. Unisys has plans for supporting 4 GB DIMMs in the box, which will boost main memory to 256 GB per domain. (Exactly when 4 GB DIMMs will be available is unclear.) Each domain in this server can have up to eight I/O submodules, each supporting 64 of the 100 MHz PCI-X slots or 32 of the 133 MHz PCI-X slots.

Perhaps the most interesting machine Unisys is announcing this week is a hybrid Xeon MP-Itanium MP server, the ES7000 Orion 460, which appears to be a cut-down version of its 64-processor ES7000 Orion 560 server. The ES7000 460 can have 4, 8, 12, or 16 of the Itanium 2 processors (all of the top-end Madison chips again) and from 4 to 32 of the "Gallatin" Xeon MP processors; it supports one Itanium domain and two Xeon domains, each with a maximum of 16 processors. The Itanium portion of the server can be split into two partitions, and each Xeon domain can be treated as a unique partition as well. The machine supports up to 160 GB of main memory and up to 96 PCI slots in 32-bit domains and up to 32 slots in 64-bit domains.

Unisys envisions the ES7000 460 as a great box for consolidating the 64-bit databases and 32-bit application servers behind most popular ERP suites onto a single frame. The Unisys spec sheets say that the ES7000 460 only supports 1.3 GHz and 1.5 GHz Madison processors, but the company says that the server will indeed support the new 1.6 GHz Madisons with either 9 MB or 6 MB caches.

All of the new ES7000 servers support Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and Datacenter editions in 32-bit or 64-bit modes. They also run Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 in 32-bit and 64-bit modes, as well as Red Hat's Enterprise Linux AS 3, which is also available in 32-bit and 64-bit modes. The ES7000 460 also supports Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Datacenter Server in 32-bit mode on its Xeon processors.

Unisys did not provide pricing information on these new ES7000 servers at press time.