New IBM server targets Sun in midrange Unix market

IDG News Service - IBM announced today a new eight-processor server that it believes combines low cost with many of the high-end functions found in larger systems.
The new p650 will arrive next month with IBM's latest Power4 processors and all of the freshest software features that have been added into its AIX operating system. With its best technology built into a system that starts at less than $30,000, the company is ready to heat up the competition against midrange leader Sun Microsystems Inc., said Karl Freund, vice president of pSeries server product management at IBM.
"Some of our competitors have done well by providing a good-enough Unix server," Freund said. "We think this is the end of good-enough servers."
IBM acknowledges that Sun has enjoyed "great success" by selling a line of low-cost midrange servers that don't have all the features of some other, more expensive midrange servers available from Sun. With this in mind, IBM will roll out the p650 at a price similar to servers from Sun but with some of the software tools its rival doesn't offer.
The p650 will ship as an 8U-high (14-in.) rack-mount server equipped with Power4+ processors. The Power4+ chips are the first Power4 chips from IBM built with a 0.13-micron fabrication process, which has helped the company lower the power consumption and boost the performance of the chips. The new chips will be available at 1.2 GHz and 1.45 GHz, Freund said.
Like its higher-end p690 server, IBM's new system will also support dynamic partitions that can run either AIX or Linux. This allows customers to run a number of applications on the same server, providing an option for server consolidation.
Freund claims that dynamic partitions, which make it possible to adjust processor power and memory resources between partitions, are an example of IBM's ability to provide a feature that Sun can't match on this class of server. Sun was one of the first Unix vendors to roll out dynamic partitions, but the company only provides the technology on its more expensive Sun Fire midrange server line.
Sun, however, contends that it has built two midrange Unix server lines for a reason. Its Sun Fire servers cater to those users who need cutting-edge technology but also want investment protection. The Sun Fire servers allow users to rip out old processors and replace them with the latest, fastest chips the company has to offer, said Pertti Manner, director of product marketing at Sun. In addition, users can use processors that run at different speeds in their