IBM takes on Sun in the Unix workstation space

IBM has escalated its war with Sun Microsystems in the Unix workstation market by aggressively pricing various machines and openly criticising its rival.

The growing spat between the two vendors has put the spotlight on a market that was popularly thought to be in decline because of the widespread adoption of PC-based machines and web terminals. But IBM's radical new marketing approach suggests there is still plenty to play for.

Colin Grocock, business development director for IBM's 170 series, said: "There's been talk about Unix being overtaken by Windows NT, but it hasn't happened. What keeps the Unix workstation market going is constant demands for more and more power and performance from the manufacturing industry."

As a result, Big Blue pushed its Linux-based servers and supercomputers hard during last autumn, while also claiming that it was displacing Sun boxes in corporate datacentres. The organisation also appeared to be changing its traditionally aloof attitude towards its competitors.

Sun responded quickly by producing figures demonstrating that it was still the leader in terms of Unix workstation shipments. Late last year, it also launched its latest Blade series of machines.

But IBM's response was to target Sun's Blade 1000 model for specific criticism. And Big Blue has now added new boxes to its entry-level RS/6000 44 P Model 170 workstation series, which it claims gives it clear price performance leadership in the market - well ahead of Sun, of course.

In fact, IBM has been telling anyone who will listen that the new Model 170s are the world's fastest low-end Unix workstations. The family is aimed at hi-tech designers in industries such as car and airline production for use in graphics-intensive activities such as product design.

High performance

Big Blue attributes the new machines' increased speed to their 450Mhz Power3 II processors, which provide 64-bit addressing capabilities and were created using IBM's copper metal manufacturing process.

The boxes also include up to 2Gb of Ram, a 146Gb hard drive and a new IBM GXT6000P graphics board, which Big Blue claims performs three times better than its predecessor, the GXT3000P, because it incorporates new components.

An entry-level Model 170 is based on a 300Mhz Power3 chip, has 256Mb of Ram and a 9Gb hard drive, but customers can upgrade them to carry the new Power3 II chip and GXT6000P graphics board.

But Big Blue attests that its new additions can perform at nearly twice the speed of a similarly configured UltraSparc-III Sun workstation, or equivalents from Hewlett Packard (HP) and SGI. And it is using workstation benchmark tests such as the Standard Performance Evaluation's SPECviewperf OpenGL suite to back up its claim.

All of this may come as a bit of a surprise, however, to those who have swallowed the propaganda that PC power is the way forward for everything from desktop to power applications and from low- to medium-end server tasks.

The new 450Mhz Model 170 might set you back around £20,000, but the workstation's specifications and its ability to cram so much power for modelling and simulation into a single box, show why Unix workstations still make sense for many users. Companies that are currently outsourcing costly design and testing might be particularly tempted.

And it appears that IBM's resurgence in the workstation space may have been well timed because it coincides with something of a downturn in Sun's fortunes.

Earlier last year, the Sparc vendor amazed Wall Street by its ability to keep growing its revenues, while everyone else around it faltered as the market for hi-tech stocks took a battering.

By the fourth quarter, however, Sun was hit by largely unexpected problems. At the heart of the situation was a lower than anticipated supply of its new Cheetah UltraSparc-III processors, which were supposed to be shipping in volume by now.

The chips form the basis of several workstation and server families, in particular Sun's new Blade range, but the company has so far failed to explain the reasons for the shortfall.

Exclusive deal

Some observers believe, however, that the problem may lie with Texas Instruments, which makes the Ultrasparc processors on an exclusive and highly secretive basis.

Until recently, Fujitsu was a second production source for Sun, but this relationship was allowed to lapse. Last year, there was even talk of the vendor subcontracting manufacture of at least some of its silicon to IBM, but that deal was never inked.

However, Quocirca analyst Clive Longbottom said that Sun was doing fine. "People are starting to realise that Windows NT does not compare like for like with Unix, and IBM has been better at capitalising on this. Sun has not done much in the last year with new models, while IBM has been highly active, giving its marketing machine a lot more to shout about. Don't write Sun off. Sun, IBM and HP are all doing pretty well for themselves," he said.