Rich Marcello readies Marvellous response to Intel's Madison

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has it that a Madison-Inside HP Superdome enterprise server is slated to debut in mid-2003. The new Superdome, which, as first and exclusively reported in The Inquirer, ultimately will support 128 Madison CPUs when Madison daughtercards ship early next year. p> At about the same time, Tru64 UNIX and OpenVMS customers should have access to 64-way and, based on perceived demand, 128-way Alpha EV78-based AlphaServer GS1280 "Marvel" systems. But that's only 1/10th the performance HP has planned for Marvel boxes. The Inquirer recently learned that HP plans to unveil an AlphaServer GS1280SC, a clustered configuration supporting up to 2,048 EV78 processors.

Not surprisingly, the target audience for the supercomputer system, which will likely consist of 20 128-CPU Marvel nodes connected by a Quadrics fat-tree switch, is HPTC customers in the oil and gas, geographical information systems, genomics, and proteomics industries.

Government customers such as the NSA and DIA should also take a shine to the new numbercruncher. Don't expect a public announcement from HP for at least six months, so score another coup for The Inq.