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IBM Unwraps First Power5+ Servers

Posted on: Wednesday, 26 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

By Martens, China

SERVERS

IBM RELEASED THE FIRST SERVERS based on its new 64-bit Powers+ processors last week. Aimed at SMBs, the new machines include a quad- core server, the System p555OQ; and a new 1U rack server, the System p5 505.

"We're starting with p5 and will extend [the Power5+ chip] to the midrange and high end in 2006," said Jeff Howard, program director of p5 product marketing at IBM.

Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Research, welcomed the move. "The announcement shows there's a lot of room for expansion in the Power processor architecture," he said.

The Power5+ chips come in clock speeds of 1.5GHz or 1.9GHz, with a maximum of 72MB of onboard cache memory. IBM is manufacturing the chips with a new 90-nanometer production process, IBM's Howard said.

Rival Sun Microsystems released the first servers based on its new UltraSpare IV+ RISC chips last month. Pund-IT's King thinks that the new Power5+ machines will win business away from Sun. "IBM has been hitting all the right notes with the pSeries for the last two to three years," he said.

China Martens, IDG News Service

Copyright Infoworld Media Group Oct 10, 2005

Source: InfoWorld

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