IBM Peddles Baby BladeCenter PS700 Express Blade Box
April 19, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
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The Power7-based Power Systems 701 and 702 blades, which have eight or 16 activated cores in their base configurations and which we detail in the lead story in this issue, are a bit overkill for a lot of SMB shops. And so IBM has sensibly created a preconfigured BladeCenter PS700 Express configuration with fewer cores activated. The PS700 Express has the same basic hardware as the PS701 blade, except that it only has four cores that work and only eight DDR3 memory slots instead of 16. The clock speed on the Power7 chip is the same 3 GHz, and there are no optional processor speeds, just like the PS701 and PS702. The blade supports 4 GB and 8 GB memory sticks, and has two Gigabit Ethernet ports and two mezzanine cards for I/O expansion. As far as I know, four of the cores on the PS700 Express blade are duds, so you can’t activate more than the four that come with it. If you want to run i 7.1 operating system (or the i 6.1.1 interim release), this blade has to be deployed in a BladeCenter-H (14-blade) or BladeCenter-S (six-blade) chassis. The base PS700 Express blade costs $4,601, plus $100 per core to activate the cores. Memory, disk, and I/O options are the same as on the PS701 and PS702 blades. This server is rated at 21,100 on IBM’s Commercial Workload Performance (CPW) test, a little less than half of the PS701 and a little less than a quarter of the PS702 double-wide blade. Why this PS700 blade was launched separately from the other two, I dunno. It will be available on June 4. RELATED STORIES IBM’s Power7 Blades Pack a CPW Punch IBM Officially Announces i/OS 7.1 IBM Holds i 6.1 Prices Steady, Slashes Application Server Fees i 7.1 Due April 14, with Open Access for RPG, Other Goodies The Power7 Systems Sales Pitch i/OS Gets Short Sheeted with Power7 Thread Counts The System iWant, 2010 Edition: Clustered Boxes IBM Fired Up About Power7-Based Smarter Systems A Little Insight Into the Rest of the Power7 Lineup Power7: Yields Are Good, Midrange Systems A Go The Power7 Rollout Begins In The Middle The System iWant, 2010 Edition: Blade and Cookie Sheet Boxes The System iWant, 2010 Edition: Entry Boxes The System iWant, 2010 Edition: Midrange Boxes IBM Preps Power7 Launch For February Looks Like i 7.1 Is Coming In April The System iWant, 2010 Edition: Big Boxes Power Systems i: The Word From On High Power Systems i: The Windows Conundrum Power Systems i: Thinking Inside the Box Rolling Thunder Rollout for Power7 Processors Next Year IBM Rolls Up an i 6.1.1 Dot Release The Curtain Rises a Bit on the Next i OS, Due in 2010 Start Planning for Power7 Iron Now IBM to Reveal Power7 Secrets at Hot Chips Power 7: Lots of Cores, Lots of Threads
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