Armonk, N.Y.’s IBM Corp. continued its strategy of applying mainframe-like architecture to its machines with the
revelation Monday of “Summit,” the latest member of the company’s eServer line.
Slated to ship this December, the eServer x360 is a compact rack server powered by Intel Corp.’s
Xeon processor, MP, also known as “Foster”. The server will include Big Blue’s vaunted intelligent management tools from IBM’s Project eLiza.
But IBM’s chief selling point is its incorporation of what it calls “Enterprise
X-Architecture,” which borrows design characteristics from the outfit’s landmark mainframe processor modules to increase
performance and scalability.
Susan Whitney, general manager of IBM’s eServer xSeries division, said the move is the next step in the company’s bid to bridge
32-bit Intel applications with Itanium processor systems.
The x360, whose base price is $16,000, bundles 4-way computing power in a 3U rack design, which will allow for some 40 percent more processors per rack than rival
vendors’ products, all while using a third less space. Also, the front side bus houses 400MHz coupled with double data rate (DDR)
memory.
And in keeping with IBM’s server power and price scale strategy, Enterprise X-Architecture will offer customers its “pay as you
grow” scalability; simply, you can tap IBM for more data capacity to meet escalating demands of a growing business rather than
paying full price up front for capacity you may or may not need. Customers can start with a four-way server and boost computing
capacity up to 16-way server if needed.
This is made possible vis-à-vis the x360’s optional RXE-100 Remote Expansion Enclosure, which features six PCI-X slots and room
for an optional six more to allow for additional capacity.
IBM to Ship “Summit” Servers
