IBM is keeping quiet about its Itanium 2 servers but a cluster of
more than 800 of them at The National Centre for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA) is spreading the word.
The NCSA has started work on a massive cluster that will combine
the computing power of 3,300 Itanium 2 processors from Intel, said
Rick Herrmann, head of the high performance computing office at
Intel.
IBM has provided the servers that make up the cluster, giving the
NCSA hundreds of four-processor systems.
IBM has yet to announce when its Itanium 2 servers, codenamed
Man-of-War, will arrive on the market but analysts say users could
expect to see the systems by the end of this month.
An IBM spokeswoman confirmed that the NCSA was working with its
Itanium 2 servers to build the giant system. She declined, however,
to provide the name or shipping date for IBM's servers.
The deal with the NCSA is a boost for Intel's Itanium 2 processor,
continuing the success for the chip in the scientific computing
space. The NCSA calls the Linux cluster its TeraGrid system.
The news would appear to confirm IBM's commitment to support
Itanium 2. IBM has held off announcing any systems based on the
chip even though rival Hewlett-Packard has already delivered a
number of Itanium 2 systems.
However, IBM earlier this year allowed a system called the x450 to
slip on to the showroom floor at the LinuxWorld conference. At the
time, an IBM representative said the x450 would arrive this year
and would hold between four and eight processors.
IBM has been reluctant to give the Itanium chips vocal support as
they compete with its own Power4 processor-based Unix
servers.
"IBM wants to use its own proprietary technology," said Illuminata
analyst Gordon Haff. "For this reason, they are not enthusiastic
promoters of Itanium, but I fully expect to see systems from
IBM."
IBM is expected to base its Itanium 2 servers on the same chipset
used in its xSeries line of Intel-based servers. The chipset -
codenamed Summit - will allow customers to use either Xeon or
Itanium 2 processors in the same chassis, which could give IBM an
edge over the competition.
"Because of the strength of Summit, I expect IBM's Itanium 2
servers to be among the stronger pieces of big iron in the
marketplace," Haff said.