Itanium 2 server vendor strategies

JUDGING BY recent benchmark results and the forthcoming launch of the third generation of the Intel Itanium Processor Family (IPF), Madison may be on steroids.

This is an opportune moment to step back and look more closely at the "serious" Itanium 2 based server vendors including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NEC, Silicon Graphics (SGI) and Unisys who are all contending for their own piece of the Itanium 2 yellow brick road.

Let's compare some of their products and their strategies.

Current Itanium Server Vendors
and their available products and strategies

Vendor	Server Types	Target Market	Strategy	Technology
HP	2 way rx2600, 4 way rx5670, 1 way zx2000 (workstation), 2 way zx6000 (workstation)	Target technical and commercial computing	Be 64-bit industry standard server leader in Commercial and Technical markets	ZX-1 Chipset. H igh-bandwidth, low-latency chipset enables the Intel Itanium 2 processor with 48GB memory capacity (HP's 4-way systems provides three times the memory capacity of other chipsets) and AGP4X support, needed for full, 3D graphics performance. The zx1 memory bandwidth has been optimized with dual memory controllers to provide 12.8GB/sec in a 4- CPU system, 8.6GB/sec in a 2-CPU system.
IBM	4-way x450	Offer the Itanium 2 choice but keep options open	Triple chip strategy with Power4 and Opteron	IBM Summit (EXA) Chipset enables Xeon and Itanium 2 processors to share chassis simultaneously. Summit also borrows some high-end features from IBM's Non-Uniform Memory Access technology: e.g. (1) A single Summit chipset can join together up to four Intel processors (2) Summit possesses a high-speed interconnect that can link four groups of four processors, allowing them to work together as a single unit with 16 processors.
NEC	32-way NEC Express5800/1320Xc	Target datacenter with commercial OLTP servers	Target commercial high end of Itanium Market. Specialize in Asia Pacific region.	Clever partitioning approach enables 4-processors to comprise a partition, which can run its own OS, either Windows or Linux.
SGI	Altix 3000 Servers that scale to 64-processors today	Target technical, scientific users with Linux based superclusters	Focus on technical and creative markets, computational chemistry, biosciences and computational fluid dynamics	SGI's 3 rd generation SGI NUMAflex shared-memory supercomputing architecture includes NUMAlink system-interconnect fabric that delivers memory and communication information between cluster nodes up to 200 times faster than standard clustering switches. The ultrafast NUMAlink connection's low latency and high bandwidth enables global shared memory, surpassing traditional clusters, high-end microprocessor-based servers and vector-based supercomputers in system performance and price/performance.
UNISYS	ES7000, (8 to 16 way ), ES7000 560 (up to 64 processors, 32-way Itanium 2)	Own consolidation of commercial Itanium space. Target Unix users with Windows.	Continue datacenter class thrust with Windows consolidation type systems like ES7000 560	Cellular Multi-Processing (CMP) enables ‘servers within servers' partitions comprising 4,8,12,or 16 processors. ES7000 560 enables up to 32 Xeon and up to 32 Itanium 2 processors to co-exist, offering powerful consolidation in a smaller footprint.

Unisys is focused on the commercial space, targeting Unix primarily with Windows and secondarily with Linux and Unixware. They are riding the Intel and Microsoft wave to grab a substantial chunk of the high-end commercial datacenter market.

Unisys has taken a very creative approach to consolidation with the ES7000 560. This server can simultaneously house from 16 to 32 IA-32 processors and from 8 to 32 Itanium 2 processors all managed from one console. This appears to be a cost-effective consolidation solution for companies currently running application servers and database servers on separate servers. There are savings in management overhead, floor space and the flexibility of mix'n'match Itanium and IA-32 in the same platform. The system can be partitioned from 4 up to 16 processors in one partition.

Unisys also achieved a top benchmark score for Siebel applications and TPC-H but they have no TPC-C numbers yet. Mark Feverston, VP Servers for Unisys comments "We are seeing the majority of our clients going with 8 to 16 way servers not larger servers. They are predominantly buying servers to run large databases and business intelligence environments".

HP has been highly visible in the sheer volume of benchmarks and market creating customer success stories it has driven since Itanium 2 was launched. HP of course was a joint developer with Intel of the Itanium chip and arguably has the most invested in its success. HP has two divisions, one targeting high performance computing with the zx2000 (1-way) and the zx6000 (2-way) and the other targeting commercial computing with the rx5670(4-way) and rx2600(2-way). HP's strategy differs from the other vendors in that only HP has one Itanium 2 based hardware platform which can run three different operating systems including Linux, Windows and HP-UX. This is meant to give customers greater choice to use the most appropriate operating system for a particular application.

HP is the heavyweight leader in the OLTP benchmarking race, holding the distinction of the highest performing non-clustered Itanium 2 benchmark of 707,102 tpmC (TPC-C). HP has close alliances with Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, BEA and has announced customer wins and benchmarks with products like BEA's WebLogic Server, Oracle's 9iRAC database and Application Server, Microsoft's SQL Server (64-bit) and SAP's R/3, mySAP SCM and APO.

The company also intends to make available OpenVMS and the "very highly available" Nonstop operating systems on the Itanium.

IBM seems to be taking a lower profile approach. IBM's recent announcement of the x450 4-way Itanium 2 server almost went unnoticed due to its stealth launch. But IBM does have a very space-efficient rack server that needs only 4Us compared with HP's 6U rx5670 and IBM has a technological advantage with its chip set code named Summit that will enable customers to use either Xeon or Itanium2 processors in the same chassis, simultaneously.

However, IBM has not yet invested in running benchmarks for their Itanium 2 servers as they have for their aptly named and impressive 32-way RISC POWER4+ based eServer pSeries 690 Turbo 7040-681 that achieved 680,613 tpmC and blew away the Itanium 2 based competition until HP's 64-way Superdome re-won top dog status with 707,102 tpmC only three weeks later. IBM appears to have a triple chip strategy, supporting Itanium 2, strongly promoting IBM's own Power 4 chip and also committing to AMD's new 64-bit Opteron chip.

SGI is an impressive high performance computing top contender. SGI is targeting the technical and graphics power users marketplace and has put a strong emphasis on larger SMP clusters with their SGI Altix 3000. Each node runs a single Linux operating system image with up to 64 Itanium 2 processors and 256GB of memory. With multiple nodes using the SGI built-in cluster interconnect, data is transmitted up to 200 times faster than with conventional clustering methods, enabling SGI Altix 3000 to scale to hundreds and eventually thousands of processors.

SGI is focused on Linux and has run a series of performance tests using real-world scientific and engineering applications like Gaussian, an application that allows scientists to predict energies, molecular structures, and vibrational frequencies; AMBER (molecular simulation); BLAST, a suite of tools designed to identify similar protein and DNA sequences within genomic databases and STAR-CD a computational fluid dynamics test suite. SGI is due to ship Altix 3000 systems as soon as the new Madison processors are commercially available. According to SGI, supported super cluster configurations of 4 to 128 Madison processors with up to 512 processors are expected to be available in fall 2003, and the company is currently working toward configurations of thousands of processors for 2004.

"SGI expects the combination of the SGI Altix 3000 and the Madison processor to deliver system performance over 50% faster than that of the current Itanium 2 processor-based Altix 3000 system."

NEC has taken a very aggressive stance to developing powerful Itanium 2 servers with their NEC Expres5800. NEC of course owns the 32-way OLTP benchmarks by achieving 342,746 tpmC, 433,107 tpmC and 514,034 tpmC (Madison based) with their 32-way Express5800, between December 2002 and April 2003. NEC is firmly targeting commercial users.

The key challenge for NEC may be their perceived weaker market presence outside of Asia and the customer perception of a niche player trying hard to market, sell and support Itanium 2 servers but lacking the resources and presence of the bigger players.

Though we have not compared Dell here, they have recently announced that they will be joining in and releasing an Itanium2 Server in 2003 but are waiting until the Madison chip starts shipping. Dell has a really smart strategy to join the race after the other vendors have invested in expensive market making programs. Even better, start selling the product after the chip performance really starts taking off, providing compelling reasons for customers to upgrade to a 64-bit industry standard server.

But what would a rival architecture
have to say about Itanium?
Andy Ingram of Sun Microsystems says "Itanium migration costs are very high, there is little software available and its architecture is unproven. Sun has been delivering 64-bit computing to customers since 1997 and SPARC/Solaris is supported by more than 12,000 ISV applications. This allows Sun to deliver a seamless integrated line of workstations and servers running from one to 106 processors. Sun's UltraSPARC uses less power, is a simpler design and uses an open architecture. Itanium cannot compare".

Fair enough? The strategies of all Itanium 2 server vendors will be put to the test now that the Madison pedal has been pushed to the metal. µ

See Also
Is the Itanium 2 on the yellow brick road?
The Intel Itanium 2 leapfrogging begins

Feisal Mosleh is at Juldee, a strategic consulting firm ( www.juldee.com). Juldee has a practice dedicated to helping enterprises qualify needs, assess solutions and optimize their payback from enterprise server deployment.