Sure, watchers can delight in the microprocessor battles between Intel Corp.
and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), both of which are trying to top each other
for the fastest, most reliable chip for mobile devices, but there are other
equally interesting competitive schemes afoot — try IBM Corp.’s push to
catch up with Sun Microsystems Inc. in the UNIX server market.
Aside from pecking away at Sun’s market share with new, regular releases
from its eServer product line (low-end, midrange, and high-end servers) IBM
Thursday revealed that it has crafted a new weapon to power servers — a
chip with two processors.
Big Blue calls this its Power4 Gigaprocessor; it incorporates IBM’s copper
and silicon-on-insulator technology to operate, as one could guess from its
name, in excess of one gigahertz.
But as everyone knows, it’s one thing to have cool, new technology at your
disposal. Big Blue said a Power4 chip delivers bandwidth from Level 2 cache
to the processors in excess of 100 GB per second, which is comparable to
downloading 20 full length DVDs in a single second. That said, it’s another
entirely to sell people on the idea of the new scheme, which IBM has
apparently done Thursday — though not yet in the U.S. where the market for
servers is arguably the most expansive.
No, Big Blue has secured Munich, Germany’s equivalent of, say, MIT, by
catching the eye of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the
Sciences, an organization that researches natural science, social science
and the arts and humanities. The non-profit Society wants to build a
supercomputer and it will pay IBM an unspecified, multi-million-dollar sum
for it’s services and new technology.
While it may not be a Deep Blue (it doesn’t have a name yet), it will be
driven by eServer Power4 technology, and those involved anticipate that it
will be the fastest non-classified supercomputer in Europe when the
finishing touches are put on it in 2002. It will be designed to achieve a
peak performance of 3.8 trillion calculations per second.
It will be used in polymer research, solid state physics and theoretical
chemistry, fusion research, astrophysics and biochemistry. But specifically,
it will be used to pick out atomic instabilities in the helical structure of
proteins that
are believed to be responsible for Mad Cow (Creutzfeld-Jakob) and
Alzheimer’s diseases.
IBM’s eServer General Manager Rod Adkins, the man largely credited for
turning around IBM’s server division in the last few years along with Dr.
John Kelly, said this is the next generation of supercomputers for the
company following Deep Blue and to ASCI White.
Indeed, the new computer will feature “distributed switch interconnect
architecture,” which is a new method of
connecting devices to boost scalability by combining bus and switch
architectures.
For those who are bullish on IBM, such as UBS Warburg, the Planck Society
deal news is even more encouraging. In a recent, engaging report titled
“Draining the Server: The Empire Strikes Back!” the investment firm said a
shift in the server industry makes IBM the top contender to overtake Sun in
the UNIX market, which when one considers the case history of IBM’s past
server follies, makes the notion of such an accomplishment impressive. (In
the mid-90s, IBM made a strategic mistake in UNIX. Management focused
investments on making UNIX systems as desktop alternatives to Windows.
Because of this, IBM completely missed the investment window for
high-performance UNIX servers — a dropped ball that Sun was able to pick up
and run with time and time again.)
So, how did Power4 come to fruition? The Warburg report said a key reason
for IBM’s slow climb to the top from the bottom rung is that management
launched a $250 million microprocessor development program in 1998 to
develop an advanced microprocessor (Power4) which was designed to leapfrog
the Sun UltraSPARC 5 and Intel McKinley microprocessor programs by late
2001.
From where Warburg stands, IBM is on schedule to introduce systems with the
Power4 microprocessor in the fourth quarter and the Planck Society deal
announced Thursday is a harbinger of things to come. In the report, the
unnamed analysts are decidedly confident in IBM’s strategy, almost so much
as to be championing Big Blue outright. But the analysts have spent time
with IBM and have reasons for why IBM is qualified to charge forward to grab
enterprise server market share by big fistfuls.
“We have been recommending IBM largely because of the attractiveness of its
financial model (large and growing recurring profit model, diversified
revenue sources, financial controls, easy compares, mainframe product cycle,
cash flow, etc.),” the report said. “But we also see IBM positioned to
leverage the fundamental shifts in the ‘Draining of the Server’ and
re-establish leadership in enterprise servers.”
The report went on to paint a bleak picture for what it calls those server
competitors in the “second-tier.” This includes Hewlett-Packard Co. and
Compaq, which it said are not in viable positions.
The report concluded with a reason for why IBM may overtake Sun in the
enterprise server arena:
“The question now is what matters more for UNIX market leadership —
technology or market share and the advantage share provides in attracting a
broader application software portfolio. Normally we would bet on the market
leader and the natural application barrier to entry. But IBM’s footprint in
enterprise servers is huge and extends beyond UNIX to include a $10 billion
mainframe revenue stream and a $3 billion AS/400-iSeries revenue base. If
Sun continues to execute poorly in server technology, IBM may very well
overtake SUN for UNIX server leadership over the next 2-3 years.”
Despite the gaudy numbers bandied about by UBS Warburg, the recurring theme
in the IBM vs. Sun server war is not necessarily that IBM’s products are
better or faster, but that they get them out when they say they will and
have stuck to their schedules. Warburg reported that Sun is in the middle of
a delayed transition to the UltraSPARC III, and as of May 9, had not shipped
a single 900 Mhz copper mpu based system.
IBM’s real gauntlet to Sun then seems to be, “Can you meet your deadlines?”
