The pSeries and iSeries compete against HP's NonStop servers, which came from Compaq (originally from Tandem). They run RISC processors but are being transitioned to Intel Corp.'s (Nasdaq: INTC) Itanium. HP's other high-end server series is AlphaServer, also from Compaq, and originally from DEC, which will get system upgrades through 2006, officials said. Sun's top servers are the Sun Fire 15K and Sun Fire 12K models. Customers using Dell systems, for their part, rely on clustering to achieve uptime with commodity components.
In services, the acquisition is Maersk Data, a subsidiary of shipping giant A.P.Moller Maersk Group. Central to the deal, which helps IBM sell to the transportation and logistics industry, is a Copenhagen data center. IBM also acquired a related services company, DMdata, founded with the 1997 merger of IT between Maersk Data and Danske Bank. IBM did not reveal the deal's size.
Meanwhile, in R&D, IBM will build the Power6 processor in the 2006/2007 timeframe, and is working with the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to build a reliable petaflop (1,000 trillion floating point operations per second) computer, said Ayd, the systems engineer. Materials science will help prevent future chips from simply melting under load, as might a return to water cooling, another researcher at the Share conference said. Computers by 2014 will be as fast as human brains, so, another researcher added, users will get more value if computers are designed to function more as people do.
Dana Kaempen, lead systems engineer at Walgreen Co., said IBM's continuing innovation is worth the cost of ownership. All of the 4,400 Walgreen's stores have an AS/400 server. Those and other IBM servers experience fewer failures than similar gear from other companies, he said. Along with the processor upgrades, "That's very valuable to me."
Evan Koblentz, Senior Editor, and James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum
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