HP introduces four processor blade server

Computerworld - Hewlett-Packard Co. introduced today what it described as the first four processor blade server from a "major" manufacturer, with prices starting at $8,999.
Hugh Jenkins, HP's vice president for marketing in the industry standard server group, said the new four processor ProLiant BL40p blade server is based on Intel Corp. Xeon MP chips and features Storage Area Network (SAN) fibre channel architecture. That makes it easy to hook the systems up to large storage clusters operated by major enterprises.
Although Jenkins touted HP's four processor blade servers as an industry first, its announcement follows by nine months the introduction of the first four processor, Xeon-based blade server by Egenera Inc., in Marlboro, Mass. Nancy Herzog, Egenera's spokeswoman, said the four processor blade server the company introduced last March also incorporated fibre channel architecture. Jenkins said he added the "major" caveat to the HP announcement to indicate the company believes its competition is with vendors such as IBM and Dell Computer Corp., of Round Rock, Texas -- not small companies such as Egenera.
The competition plans to nip at HP's lead. IBM plans to introduce four processor blades later this year with SAN connections, according to spokeswoman Lisa Lanspery. Liam Nguyen, a Dell spokesman, said his company also has four processor blades on its product roadmap. Nguyen declined to provide product introduction dates.
Dr. Glenn Ricart, CTO of CenterBeam Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based IT outsourcing services provider, said his company intends to evaluate the new HP blade server because it "not only extends processing power but helps create a simple and powerful storage network. This make it easy to scale both processing and SAN to meet whatever demands our clients have."
Jenkins said HP, based in Palo Alto, Calif., will offer customers the option of buying the new blade servers with Intel Xeon NMP chips at clock speeds of either 1.5GHz or 2GHz.
The company also introduced a new two processor server, the ProLiant BL20p, which Jenkins said features the same SAN architecture as the four processor server. Prices for the BL20p start at $3,399, he said.

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