IBM holds back on introducing four way Opterons

BIG BLUE APPEARS to be wavering on its commitment to AMD Opteron microprocessors, according to recent roadmaps seen by the INQUIRER.

But that wavering may be to do with how it responds to the introduction of current and future Xeon chips from Intel, which incorporate EM64T (iAMD) instructions.

Currently, IBM positions its AMD 64-32 offerings - the e325 - as high performance two way servers for Linux clusterings at what it describes as an affordable price.

The roadmaps we've seen show that in August it will release three flavours of the e326 - these support Opteron 250s, 248s and 246s, with support for up to 12GB of ECC DDR memory, and Ultra 320SCSI drives. But no four way Opteron system appears to be on the cards, at least for the next six months.

In August it will also release two way Xeons, dubbed the x346, in different SKUs supporting Xeon processors with 800MHz front side buses at up to 3.6GHz.

There appears to be a gigantic gap in four way X86-based chip offerings for the rest of the year.

Nor is its Intellistation A Pro, which uses Opteron tech, due for any upgrade between now and December, it appears.

It is introducing an M Pro mini tower system using a Prescott-T with EM64T, around about August.

What is interesting is that it still appears to be wedded to the Intel Itanium platform. In October it is likely to launch four way Intel Itanium 2s dubbed the x455 machines, in 1.5GHz/4MB, 1.6GHz/6MB and 1.7GHz/9MB flavours. The first of these is uniprocessor, the second are two ways systems.

However, IBM is talking about xSeries machines and the like, so perhaps it has another branding initiative up its sleeves? Or maybe not. Big Blue won't talk to the INQUIRER. Or is that we won't talk to it? We forget. µ