IBM Itanium 2 Servers Keep Low Profile

IBM won't say a word about its Itanium 2 servers, but a cluster of more than 800 of them at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications is speaking for itself.

The NCSA has started work on a massive cluster that will combine the computing power of 3300 Intel Itanium 2 processors, said Rick Herrmann, head of the high-performance computing office at Intel. IBM has provided the servers that make up the cluster, giving the NCSA hundreds of four-processor systems, he said

IBM has yet to announce when its Itanium 2 servers, code-named Man-of-War, will arrive on the market. However, customers could expect to see the systems announced by the end of November, says one source close to the matter.

An IBM spokesperson confirmed that the NCSA is working with its Itanium 2 servers to build the giant system. She declined, however, to provide the name or shipping date for IBM's servers.

The deal with the NCSA is a boost for Intel's Itanium 2 processor, continuing the chip's success in the scientific computing space. The NCSA calls the Linux cluster its TeraGrid system. It is housed at the University of Illinois, according to the NCSA Web site.

Divided Loyalties

The news would appear to confirm IBM's commitment to support Itanium 2. IBM has held off announcing any systems based on the chip even though rival Hewlett-Packard has already delivered a number of Itanium 2 systems.

However, IBM earlier this year allowed a system dubbed the x450 to slip onto the showroom floor at the LinuxWorld conference here. At the time, an IBM representative said the x450 would arrive this year and would hold between four and eight processors.

IBM has been reluctant to give the Itanium chips vocal support, as they compete directly with its own Power4 processor-based Unix servers, according to one analyst.

"IBM wants to leverage its own proprietary technology," said Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata. "For this reason, they are not enthusiastic promoters of Itanium, but I fully expect to see systems from IBM."

IBM is expected to base its Itanium 2 servers on the same chip set currently used in its xSeries line of Intel-based servers. The chip set--code-named Summit--will allow customers to use either Xeon or Itanium 2 processors in the same chassis, which could give IBM an edge over the competition, Haff said.

"Because of the strength of Summit, I expect IBM's Itanium 2 servers to be among the stronger pieces of big iron in the marketplace," Haff said.