Posted 11/17/09 at 07:05:50 AM by Paul Lilly

HP on Monday launched a whole bunch of new hardware and software products, including a blade system the OEM claims can fit two systems in the physical space of one.

The company's ProLiant BL2x220c G6 combines two server nodes in a single blade chassis and supports up to two 4-core low voltage Intel Xeon 5500 series processors per node. And according to HP, the G6 increases memory capacity by 33 percent over previous generation blade server products.

HP's G6 is one of several products aimed at extending the company's Extreme Scale-Out (ExSO) portfolio introduced in June. The goal, HP says, is to cut back the total cost of ownership while also increasing data center capacity.

"The ExSO portfolio was created to meet the demanding needs of scale-out as well as high-performance computing customers that require highly efficient and powerful computing infrastructures," said Steve Cumings, director of Marketing for the Scalable Computing and Infrastructure organization at HP. "We will continue to add to this portfolio, delivering innovative solutions based on our deep understanding of scale-out data centers and enabling our customers to gain more value from their infrastructure."

More info here and here.

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Posted 09/24/09 at 08:22:31 AM by Paul Lilly

Viliv, the company responsible for the S5 handheld and S7 tablet, was on hand at IDF to show off its upcoming S10 "Blade" with a 10-inch swiveling touchscreen display.

Complimenting the display is Windows 7, although multi-touch support is disappointingly left out of the equation. What wasn't overlooked was a full QWERTY keyboard. The S10 will also ship with either a 1.33GHz or 2GHz Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, choice between a 60GB hard drive or 32GB SSD, Bluetooth, WiFi, 3G, and at least two USB ports.

Viliv says users can expect 10 hours of battery life, or 7 hours of nothing but non-stop video. That alone might make up for the lack of multi-touch support.

The S10 is slated for release in November. No word yet on price.

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Posted 05/18/09 at 04:00:00 PM by Paul Lilly

Not only is there still a market for DDR2 modules, but there are even new products still coming down the pipeline. Take for example OCZ's just-announced Blade and Platinum Series Low Voltage kits, which the company says have been qualified to excel at low voltages.

"Though enthusiasts are known for applying increased voltage to modules in order to obtain higher performance, our newest modules offer exceptional speeds at lower voltages improving overall performance and stability," commented Eugene Chang, Vice President of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group.

The new series comes in 4GB kits with speeds ranging from DDR2-1066 to DDR2-1200. Regardless of stock frequency, each kit comes rated at 5-5-5-18 latency timings and consumes just 1.8V. Giving the stock frequency ceiling, 1.8V is pretty impressive when you consider some enthusiast kits have required up to an uncomfortable 2.3V.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Posted 05/11/09 at 10:31:51 AM by Paul Lilly

You may have thought Intel's Atom processor line was only suitable for netbooks and nettops, but 'au contraire mon fraire,' says Supermicro, who recently announced the launch of 4W and 8W Atom server solutions.

"Bringing the low-power consumption advantages of Atom processors to the server appliance market empowers our customers with energy-saving, quiet solutions that provide flexible expansion and storage features previously unattainable with Atom solutions," said Charles Lian, president and CEO of Supermicro.

Two platforms are being outfitted with Intel Atom chips, the X7SLA-L with a single-core Atom 230 processor, support for up to four SATA ports with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10, seven USB 2.0 headers, 2GB of DDR2 memory, and Intel GMA 950 graphics, and the X7SLA-H, which uses the dual-core Atom 330 processor and doubles up power consumption from 4W to 8W.

Both servers weight just 10 pounds and are under 10 inches deep, and both offer support for full-height, half-length expansion cards. They're also quiet thanks to a fanless chassis.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Posted 03/27/09 at 02:45:33 PM by Paul Lilly

It's been rumored that Cisco would move into making its own blade servers, and that rumor turned into a reality last week when the company accounced its Unified Computing effort. A bevy of press releases related to the effort were released by Cisco last Monday, which has the company aiming to unify components of the data center into a single footprint and cut both ownership and operating costs.

The company's new Nehalem-based blade servers have been in design and development for two years and spells bad news for HP, who Cisco has dead in its sights.

"We're going to compete with HP," said Padmasree Warrior, Cisco CTO. "I don't want to sugarcoat that. There is bound to be change in the landscape of who you compete with and who you partner with."

Cisco's blade launch includes partners like BMC, EMC, VMWare, and Microsoft.

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