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 Servers
Server market getting back on its feet
After a slowdown that had the market in gloom
till September 2002, the server market is finally showing signs
of recovering. The UNIX server market, in particular, is expected
to grow by 17-18 percent this year, says Prashant L Rao
 Last
year, the Intel-based server segment of the Indian server market
was down but the UNIX segment made up for it by growing 17 percent
over 2001. Preliminary data from IDC shows the UNIX market at $130
million for 2002. The UNIX market is expected to repeat its performance
in 2003 as well, clocking a growth rate of 17-18 percent. In the
Intel segment, Q1 to Q3 of 2002 saw a slowdown. In Q4 the market
picked up momentum, showing marginal growth. In 2003, single-digit
growth is expected, and the market should be stronger in H2.
In the UNIX space, Sun continues to dominate
and the company claims that it is enjoying robust growth, which
indicates that it may well end up at the top of the heap in 2003
as well. In the Intel space it will be a tussle between HP and IBM
for the top slot. Last year, IBM gave HP a tough chase.
The year ahead will be crunch time for
Intel’s Itanium too. The fate of Intel’s bid for dominance
in the 64-bit space will be decided one way or another in 2003.
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| IBM is going to release a 32-way
Xeon server that will compete with entry-level UNIX servers,
says M Ganesh |
Intel steps up
the pace
While Intel’s unit shipments have outpaced the RISC crowd for
a long time, this year Gartner predicts that Intel servers will
account for more than half the server market in revenues. The chip
giant is stepping on the accelerator; it will announce a slew of
Xeon and Itanium processors. Also coming up are brand new chips
named Nocona and Potomac, based on a design that will be shared
by the Pentium 4’s successor—Prescott. Nocona will debut
in late 2003 or early 2004, Potomac in 2004. Potomac will be a version
of Nocona for four-processor servers. Both processors will be accompanied
by new chipsets. Intel will release Xeons with a faster bus (533
MHz) and larger cache. The company will come out with Gallatin for
4- and 8-way boxes.
Gallatin with 2 MB of cache and 2 GHz came
out near the end of 2002. This year, it will get faster and eventually,
Gallatin will have a 4 MB cache. The 800 MHz FSB has debuted on
desktop P4 boards. It’s a toss up as to when this technology
will make its way to the Xeon server platform. Right now Xeon boards
support 400/533 MHz FSB.
Make or break
year for Itanium
2003 will be the year when Itanium’s fate will be decided.
With Itanium 2 (McKinley) offering better performance for business
applications, things have begun to look up for IA-64. According
to IDC, Itanium shipments began to grow in Q4 2002.
“The chip is doing better than we
expected,” says William Wu, Itanium Processor Family program
manager, Intel Asia Pacific.
Two Itanium processor launches are slated for later this year. Madison,
the next version of Itanium 2 is due in summer, followed in H2 by
Deerfield, which will consume less power and come with a more attractive
price tag.
Deerfield will run at 1GHz and will have
a 1.5 MB cache. It will require 62 watts of power, less than half
of that of Itanium 2 chips that guzzle up 130 watts, and yet it
is expected to offer the same level of performance. Deerfield will
be aimed at blade and rack servers.
Itanium-based servers are expensive today,
costing $10,000 and more. With Deerfield, Itanium-based servers
will be available in the $5,000 to $7,000 range.
Madison will run at 1.5 GHz with 6 MB of
Level 3 cache. It will be slot-compatible with McKinley. Madison
will be marketed under the Itanium 2 name.
Itanium 1 did a great job on technical
computing but it took its successor, McKinley, to improve performance
while running business applications and databases.
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| The server market will benefit
from the second-phase of IT deployment being undertaken by the
manufacturing industry, says Pallab Talukdar |
As of now HP is the only server company
wholeheartedly behind Itanium. IBM’s got a few models but its
energies are largely behind its own Power processors and Sun’s
focus is firmly on UltraSparc. HP, however, is working on a 128-processor
Superdome with Itanium processors, slated to debut in late 2003
or early 2004.
To date, Itanium has been confined to the
scientific computing niche. As the number of business applications,
from the likes of Oracle, SAP and BEA grows, the processor family
should move into the mainstream.
Intel knows that it has to pick up the
pace. It has speeded up the release schedule of Itanium processors,
adding a new chip for 2004 (a new version of Madison that will contain
9 MB of Level 3 cache) and bringing forward the launch date of a
dual core Itanium, Montecito, to 2005 from 2007. If Intel considers
Montecito as a single processor requiring one software license,
it would mark a change from today’s market where IBM’s
Power 4 is considered as two processors, with user companies needing
to buy two software licenses for each chip.
Intel’s upcoming Itanium processors,
including Montecito, will all fit into the same motherboard sockets
and chipsets used in today’s Itanium servers.
Not only will these processors be system
compatible, they will also be software compatible with McKinley.
Intel’s Wu adds, “SGI has a 64
processor system with Itanium 2. We believe that many more large
systems will become available this year.”
Intel is yet to take a call on incorporating
hyperthreading into Itanium.
The release of 64-bit Windows 2003, coinciding
with the Windows 2003 32-bit launch in April, will be a shot in
the arm for Itanium. Shortly after that, SQL Server 64-bit, DB2
and Oracle for Itanium 2 should be out. “Once Windows Server
2003 debuts, acceptance of Itanium will be much healthier. There
are a lot of pilot projects going on,” says Wu.
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| The DL760 G2 will be HP’s flagship
in the enterprise space along with the DL740, says Vaibhav Phadnis |
Blades gain acceptability
Compaq was the first vendor to launch blades, followed by HP. Then
came IBM and Dell. Now, Sun has announced UltraSparc and Intel-compatible
blades. It will also offer special-purpose blades for SSL acceleration
and other specific tasks. Sun has plans for higher-end blades; dual-processor
Intel-compatible blades will emerge in H2 2003. Blades with dual-core
UltraSparc chips—upcoming products with two processors on the
same slice of silicon—will arrive in the first half of 2004.
It’s been a game of leapfrog in blades.
HP came out with single processor blades, IBM countered with dual
Xeon models and HP’s matched that one. Now HP’s upcoming
blades will have four processors.
You’ll be able to fit two BL40p systems
in an enclosure that would hold eight HP’s existing two-processor
BL20p blades. Intel’s new Gallatin Xeon MP processors will
power the new four-processor blades. HP is moving its existing dual-processor
blades to Xeon from Pentium III. The new blades will be able to
connect over fibre channel to remote storage.
IBM will launch blades with four Xeon processors
and models with two Power processors in H2 2003.
Over the long term, Big Blue has ambitious
plans to use a special high-speed link to join two four-processor
blade servers into an eight-processor system using a variation of
IBM’s EXA Summit chipset that links four-processor groups into
8-, 12- and 16-processor x440 servers. IBM expects about 40 percent
of its blades to run Linux and 60 percent to run Windows.
Dual-core server chips proliferate
IBM’s Power 4 is the only commercial processor with a dual
core today. Soon, it will have company with processors from HP and
Sun and, further down the line, Intel.
The UltraSparc IV chip, successor to Sun’s
present UltraSparc III, will be a dual-core model that packs two
processors onto a single slice of silicon. The UltraSparc IV will
fit into existing UltraSparc III-based servers when it arrives later
this year.
HP’s upcoming PA-RISC 8800 ‘Mako’
chip will be a dual-core processor. The Itanium roadmap too has
a dual-core processor in it. Mako, which should beat 1 GHz, should
ship in Q3/Q4 2003. Mako includes two complete PA-8700 cores, integrated
L1 caches, an integrated L2 cache controller on a single chip and
an off chipset of L2 cache SRAMs packaged in a single module.
- Core banking and telecom will
sustain growth and grow even faster. Core banking and Internet
will fuel demand in the finance segment. Deregulation of
the insurance segment will drive IT investments in 2002
and beyond. Manufacturing segment spending will remain stymied.
- Value-added applications in
the mobile segment. Mobile telecom services segment to witness
explosive growth in server spending in 2002.
- ERP/SCM/CRM/data warehousing
will remain strong. The SME segment is gradually opening
to low-end custom versions.
- Server consolidation in banks
first, and then gradually in other segments, will drive
server sales in the medium- to long-term.
- Life sciences/bio IT opportunity.
Source: IDC India
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- Intel will thrive at the low-end
volume market, and IA-64—like any new architecture—will
need to prove itself before it becomes a serious contender.
- Rack-dense demand will grow,
with blades adding to momentum.
- Linux will make inroads into
new areas such as high performance computing (HPC) with
clusters.
- RISC-UNIX will maintain its
stronghold on the large data centre and will continue its
dominance in the mission-critical space.
- Intel will remain strong in
the 2-way space, while RISC will remain a force in the 8-way-plus
market, though IA-64 will be tough competition by mid-2003
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- Madison and Deerfield will
bring Intel’s price-performance benefits to the 64-bit
space with a bang. This is the time to pilot Itanium 2 (McKinley’s
successors will be drop-in replacements) and take a call
on IA-64.
- Blades offer an excellent
option on the edge of the network.
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|
 Customer
caution on hardware purchases will continue, though at lesser
than last year’s levels.- Growing opportunity for vendors
to drive server and system consolidation initiatives in
large organisations.
- Linux will gain acceptance
as more applications are being developed and service and
support levels are being augmented by vendors.
- Apart from new users, vendors
should focus on replacement accounts. They should help users
understand the economic benefits and return on investment
on new deployments vis-à-vis retaining existing servers
that have reached end-of-life.
- Main market drivers continue
to be the telecom and finance verticals.
Vinod Nair, Research Analyst-Hardware
Platforms, Mumbai, India
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- A follow up to IBM’s
popular x440 Intel server using the Itanium 2 or its successor
is expected this year.
- “We are going to release
a 32-way Xeon server that will compete with entry-level
UNIX servers,” says M Ganesh, vice president, Enterprise
Server Group, IBM India Ltd.
- IBM is working on the Power5
that will be used in a new 64-processor system expected
in H1 2004. This server will be the successor to the 32-processor
p690, which is the flagship of IBM’s UNIX range today.
The processor will offer ‘simultaneous multithreading,’
a turbo-charged variation on Intel’s hyperthreading,
which Big Blue claims will offer a 100 percent performance
boost. IBM will bring the Power5 processor to mid-range
and low-end Unix servers in the second half of 2004. Using
a technology called Fast Path, the Power5 will be able to
take over many tasks handled by software, including networking,
virtual memory and passing messages among computers. The
Power5 will have better error detection and correction and
will be able to run more operating systems simultaneously
in separate partitions than the Power4.
- The next version of IBM’s
UNIX, AIX, will let each processor on a pSeries box handle
as many as 10 operating systems.
- The Power4+, an upgrade to
IBM’s Power4, will debut in the p630+, a 1- to 4-way
box.
- IBM will offer Linux-ready
Express Configurations for the p650, 2- to 8-way SMP mid-range
servers for customers running open source applications on
Linux.
- IBM will launch blades with
four Xeon processors and models with two Power processors
in H2 2003.
- The Integrated Platform for
e-business on zSeries will let customers quickly and easily
implement e-business solutions for Linux on IBM’s mainframes.
This platform will include server software that will host
multiple virtual Linux servers and robust e-business software
to integrate and to handle e-business requirements.
IBM will bring the Power5
processor to mid-range and low-end Unix servers in the second
half of 2004
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- Acer expects BFSI to continue
to be a key vertical with its single processor servers going
into the branch automation market and dual-processor mid-level
boxes being used to computerise branch operations of insurance
companies. The government is expected to be a big market
this year, as it traditionally has been a market for dual-processor
machines. Software exporters are a new focus area for the
company and it plans to sell rack optimised servers to this
segment. “We see a shift toward dual processor platforms,”
says Sam Oommen Thomas, senior product marketing manager,
Acer India.
- The company is making a complete
shift to the Xeon processor. Pentium IIIs are on the way
out, the last units will be shipped by March.
- Acer recently began shipping
quad processor Xeon servers with storage solutions (DAS
and SAN).
- Applications driving Acer’s
business will include branch automation, e-governance and
call centre applications.
Acer is making a complete shift
to the Xeon processor
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- “Manufacturing is starting
to contribute. Indian manufacturers have restructured and
are more competitive now. They are gearing up for the next
phase of IT deployment—new ERP installations or beyond
ERP with PLM/PDM or supply chain,” says Pallab Talukdar,
director- Sales & Marketing, Business Critical Systems
Group, HP India. Some spending is expected from the government,
particularly for e-governance projects. “If value-added
tax (VAT) takes off, it will give an impetus to the government
to restructure its revenue collection mechanism,” explains
Talukdar. Other key segments for HP’s UNIX servers
will be data warehousing across telecom and banking, financial
services and insurance (BFSI) and high-performance computing
(HPC), an early adopter of Itanium on a large scale.
- Telecom and BFSI are HP’s
key verticals for Intel servers in 2003. In telecom, rollouts
by CDMA players such as Reliance are driving the market.
BFSI spending has picked up from November 2002 onwards.
Q1 2003 saw large investments by BFSI.
- HP plans to release a slew
of products built around Madison (the next version of Itanium
that will be launched in mid-2003). It will deliver 8-way,
16-way, 32-way and 64-way systems built around Madison.
- In H2, HP will release the
PA RISC 8800 chip, code-named Mako. HP will release one
more PA-RISC chip before transitioning all of its servers
to Itanium.
- HP’s roadmap has two
more generations of both Alpha and PA-RISC. In 2006-07 it
plans to make the switch to Itanium. In the long term, HP
will use Itanium processors in its top-of-the-line NonStop
servers. HP will support five operating systems on Itanium—Windows,
Linux, HP-UX, OpenVMS and NonStop Kernel.
- In March, HP will release
an 8-way server using the 2 GHz Gallatin chip. “The
DL760 G2 will be our flagship (Intel server) in the enterprise
space along with the DL740,” says Vaibhav Phadnis,
business manager, Industry Standard Servers at HP India.
- HP will also launch 4-way
Xeon blades in March. It released 2-CPU Xeon blades in January.
“2-CPU blades have caught the fancy of the market,”
says Phadnis. HP has a 58 percent share of the global blade
server market.
In 2006-07 HP plans to make
the switch to Itanium and will support five operating systems
— Windows, Linux, HP-UX, OpenVMS and NonStop Kernel
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- N1 — Sun will release
products that will reduce complexity. It will build a hardware-software
stack that will aid in administration, resource management
and capacity planning. Sun will release its provisioning
engine for N1 in mid-2003. Metering and telemetry components
that monitor the working of N1 components will arrive in
2004.
- x86 and SPARC blades —
Sun will offer both x86 and SPARC blades. The company will
offer dedicated blades for tasks such as load-balancing
and SSL proxy. The N1 provisioning sever on a single blade
will allocate and configure a whole bunch of blades.
- Project Orion — is Sun’s
plan to make its software simpler to install, run and pay
for by offering a single, expanded version of its Solaris
operating system and release updates every quarter. Orion
will include Sun ONE and later expand to cover other products,
including Sun’s storage management offerings.
Project Orion is Sun’s plan
to make its software simpler to install, run and pay for,
by offering a single operating system
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