Turbo-charged memory and Opterons rev up IBM servers

RAM accelerator promises greater speed for rack and blade servers

IBM is making a bigger bet on AMD’s Opteron processors for servers, pairing them with a new memory technology it says will offer unique advantages.

The IT giant will introduce five new servers from September, tapping AMD’s imminent “Revision F” dual-core Opteron, codenamed Santa Rosa, promising more efficient power use than previous generations, as well as providing virtualisation and security capabilities.

Performance characteristics and prices of the forthcoming Opterons are yet to be announced but IBM said it would offer three rack-mounted and two blade servers based on the chips. The systems will come in two-socket and four-socket configurations to offer up to eight cores.

Although IBM was an early user of Opterons, shipping AMD-based servers three years ago, rivals such as HP and Sun were quicker to offer Opterons across volume servers. IBM’s new releases will change that and broaden an extensive server portfolio that already includes systems based on Intel’s Xeon and IBM’s own Power processors.

“It’s a market-driven situation,” said Tikiri Wanduragala, senior server consultant at IBM. “We’re following what customers are telling us and the market is big – you’re not all fighting for one bone.”

That attitude will see IBM using Intel’s “Woodcrest” generation of Xeon processors as well as Opteron but not, however, the “Montecito” dual-core Itanium.

IBM hopes to distinguish itself in Opteron servers through a patent-pending capability it calls Xcelerated Memory Technology that will boost memory access speeds by up to 15 percent over rivals, the firm claimed. “It’s like a turbo-charger for memory,” said Stuart McRae, IBM system marketing manager. “It gives us the full 128GB [RAM capacity] at the full 667MHz speed. Others will be restricted to four Dimms per CPU whereas we will have eight.”

If the technology delivers as IBM describes it, the memory boost could be a boon for in-memory databases and other demanding applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence programs.

Although under renewed pressure from Intel, AMD continues to demonstrate impressive growth and now accounts for about 26 percent of the x86 server market, according to Mercury Research, more than doubling previous annual growth.

IBM is also making a timely attempt to appeal to users suffering from overheating datacentres by offering its Cool Blue line of power management and cooling technologies.