For everyone responsible for managing servers it looks like it’s going to be a great year and month. Well as long as you like handling new kit. After a depressing year in which Intel’s Nehalem was one of the few bright spots, we’re going to get new processors from almost all chip manufacturers.
- Intel has already released its Westmere EP processors this month and has more to come in the next couple of days
- AMD is launched its Opteron 6000 ‘Magny Cours’ chip on March 29th 2010
- IBM has launched its Power 7 RISC chips a few weeks ago and will update its mainframes with the z11 processors later in the year
Aside from the performance hikes and growing complexity in terms of the number of cores, most server vendors are working on unique features to help with data centre deployment. IBM, for instance, has added its MAX5 memery extension and will be offering water cooling on its z11, Fujitsu has designed a chimney on its CX1000 racks to do away with ‘hot aisles’, Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) team continues to produce highly-customised high density designs, etc. This is the first time in which data centre use has been thoroughly addressed in design terms from the chip up and each vendor’s differentiation makes researching and choosing servers more interesting than ever.
One key issue to consider in selecting new servers is ‘power per Watt per $’ and there are a number of new solutions which will help both those who need the greatest processing power and those who have space restrictions. Over all all it’s going to be an interesting year for data centre deployments and, if capital expenditure budgets can be unlocked again, a period of growth for server vendors.
Filed under: Processor, Server Tagged: | AMD, Fujitsu, IBM, Intel
