IBM server roadmaps emerge

Sir Lou Gerstner's firm will next year introduce its Regatta SP switch attach and cluster support family, in several flavours and configurations.

In 2002, the clustered enterprise server family will include the Regatta H and H Plus, the Regatta Mi and Mi entry, the Regatta LER, and LPAR.

On the high end end, the Regatta H+ will support between eight and 32 processors in a symmetric multiprocessing configuration at speeds of 1.5GHz.

The Regatta Mi will include two to eight way configurations with processors running at 1.35GHz, while the Regatta Mi Entry will include one to eight way configurations with chip speeds of 1.15GHz.

This year, we are seeing SP Switch Attach at 375MHz ThinWide, SP Cluster support using the H80, the M80 and the P660, while the Regatta H family includes 8-32 way processurs running at speeds of 1 to 1.3 GHz. Again, this year, the p660 Model 6M1 support SMP two to eight way configurations at 750MHz, while the p660 Models 6H0 and 6H1 use 450/700MHz uniprocessor configurations and 668MHz eight way systems in the case of the 6H1.

In IBM's pSeries this year, we will see 668MHz six way systems in the high volume 6F1 tower server family. Colt will be a dual processor configuration running at 375/450MHz, while Thresher is a uni- or dual processor family running at 800MHz.

There are versions of these for rack servers too, with the adition of Xena (the warrior princess?) which comes in a dual 800MHz configuration.

Next year, IBM's Regatta LE will have one to six processors running at 1.15GHz, while the Regatta LER will be a one way system running at 1.15GHz. The Thresher Plus will be a high volume 1GHz dual processor unit running at 1GHz. For the rack, next year, Big Blue will release the Regatta LER, a one to four way machine using chips ranging from 1.15-1.35GHz. The Thresher Plus will be a 1GHz rack configuration in single or dual mode, while Xena Plus will expand the previous rack system to 1GHz.

Meanwhile, IBM is also telling its favoured customers, presumably over strawberries and cream at Wimbledon or on the river at Henley (hence the Regatta series), of its plans for AIX 5L.

Version 5.1 of AIX 5L is aimed at both GA Power and Itanic systems, with 32 way scaleability, support for 256GB of memory, and workload manager enhancements, including SecureWay LDAP V3.2 with Kerberos 5 and the Linux Operating Environment (LOE).

Next year, 5.2 will add NUMA and SMP performance tuning, McKinley enabling for Itanic platforms, RAS enhancements, flexibile partitioning support, and system management improvements.

By the way, if anyone out there in Big Blue PR land is reading this, would you care to include us into any announcements or press events you might be holding. We used to have a good relationship with IBM but perhaps you haven't noticed we've moved from the Other Plaice here to theinquirer.net. Thank you very much. µ