Tongues Wag About Future eServer i5 Announcements

The ink is hardly dry on the promotional materials for the new eServer i5 Model 520 and Model 570 servers IBM launched last week, and people are already talking about the future Power5-based “Squadron” servers that Big Blue has slated for later this year. While the two Squadrons announced last week are a good beginning, they do not yet constitute a product line. But the indications are that, by year’s end, the eServer i5 will be fleshed out, top to bottom.

IBM’s top brass last week confirmed in several meetings with Guild Companies that the company is indeed trying to get the high-end 64-way Squadron box, presumably to be called the eServer i5 Model 590, out the door some time in 2004. As I suggested might be the case last week, IBM appears to be trying to synch the iSeries and pSeries launch of this big bad box. Shipments of this machine and AIX 5L 5.3, which is required for the Power5 machines, are not expected until late September or early October, but the rumblings I hear are that IBM might launch the machine in late July or early August, to give its sales team some time to crank up the sales cycle so IBM will enter the fourth quarter with a lot of momentum.

IBM is also reportedly working on a four-way OS/400 server, called the eServer i5 Model 550, which will slide into the product line between the new i5 Model 520, which can have one or two active Power5 processors, and the i5 Model 570. While the Model 570 is a server that can house either one or two Power5 processors, which means it has from one to four active processor cores, it is more than a simple four-way server. As I explained last week, the Model 570s include sophisticated NUMA-like clustering technologies built right into the system board that will allow two, three, or four Model 570 systems to be glued into a single system image that spans from one to 16 active processor cores. This is very similar to the xSeries 440 and xSeries 445 “Summit” servers IBM sells using Intel‘s Xeon and Itanium processors.

The NUMA-style clustering technologies are not cheap, however, and IBM eventually wants to have a workhorse but inexpensive four-way server to fill in the gap between the Model 520 and the Model 570, just like it does in the current xSeries. The odds are that IBM will offer an upgrade path from the Model 520 to the Model 550 as well, which gives entry i5 customers somewhere to go when they outgrow their machines. It is unclear when IBM might launch the i5 Model 550, but it could be announced around the same time as the i5 Model 590 or it could come out as the year ends. What IBM sources have told me is that we should expect server announcements on a more or less quarterly basis as IBM rolls out new products. IBM finally understands that people like new technology, even if they don’t technically need it. Being new and exciting makes people excited.

Based on intuition, and the fact that IBM can’t repeat model numbers or it will drive its pricing and configuration databases nuts, it seems unlikely that IBM will deliver i5 Model 500, Model 510, or Model 530 servers. Those, you will remember, are the names of the first-generation PowerPC processors, the “Cobra4” and “Muskie” 64-bit PowerPCs, which saved IBM’s cookies in the midrange. But there is room for a Model 580, which could be a future 32-way server made in the same style as the Model 570, but from server building blocks with four Power5 processors (and eight cores), instead of the two dual-core Power5s used in the Model 570.

And while this is not in the plan, according to the IBMers, I have pressed, and I think there is some room for an eServer i5 Model 505, which I would envision as a very small, very inexpensive entry OS/400 server. I’m not exactly sure what IBM can do and still make money, but even an $11,500 configured i5 Model 520 Express configuration is too expensive for a lot of companies. There has to be a way to get a configured i5 machine down into the $6,000 price range, even if it has a lot of the oomph in the Power5 processor geared down. I’m going to think about it for a bit and see what makes sense. You’ll be the first to know as soon as I have sussed it out.

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