1. Electronic Arts is rumored to be closing Pandemic Studios. Yes, this is the same Pandemic that, along with BioWare, EA paid more than $800 million for two years ago. Although Pandemic was behind Full Spectrum Warrior, one of my favorite games of all time, its recent efforts, like last year’s Mercenaries 2, were met with lukewarm critical reviews.

2. Stunning photograph of a crescent Earth shot by Rosetta, the European comet-chasing spacecraft. Oh yeah, and irregularities in Rosetta’s flight path may lead to a re-writing of the known laws of physics.

3. Fascinating profile of Jon Huntsman, Jr., Obama’s new (Republican) man in China. In an awesome historical twist, Huntsman as a child handed Henry Kissinger his briefcase as he departed with Nixon on the famous secret trip to China in 1971.

4. Intel’s Itanium chip finally turns a profit. After a decade. And billions of dollars of investment and promotion.

5. And from The Onion video files: Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks.

(UPDATED 10/28/09 with new links to full article)

I received a Tweet from @HPITOps linked to Gartner’s first ever “Magic Quadrant” for blade servers.  The Magic Quadrant is a tool that Gartner put together to help people easily where manufacturers rank, based on certain criteria.  As the success of blade servers continues to grow, the demand for blades increases.  You can read the complete Gartner paper at http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=4AA3-0100ENW.pdf, but I wanted to touch on a few highlights.

Key Points

• *Blades are less than 15% of the server marketplace today.
• *HP and IBM make up 70% of the blade market share
• *HP, IBM and Dell are classified as “Leaders” in the blade market place and Cisco is listed as a “Visionary” 

What Gartner Says About Cisco, Dell, HP and IBM

Cisco
Cisco announced their entry into the blade server market place in early 2009 and as of the past few weeks began shipping their first product.  Gartner’s report says, “Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) is highly innovative and is particularly targeted at highly integrated and virtualized enterprise requirements.”  Gartner currently views Cisco as being in the “visionaries” quadrant.  The report comments that Cisco’s strengths are:

• they have a  global presence in “most data centers”
• differentiated blade design
• they have a cross-selling opportunity across their huge install base
• they have strong relationships with virtualization and integration vendors

As part of the report, Gartner also mentions some negative points (aka “Cautions”) about Cisco to consider:

• Lack of blade server install base
• limited blade portfolio
• limited hardware certification by operating system and application software vendors

Obviously these Cautions are based on Cisco’s newness to the marketplace, so let’s wait 6 months and check back on what Gartner thinks.

Dell
No stranger to the blade marketplace, Dell continues to produce new servers and new designs.  While Dell has a fantastic marketing department, they still are not anywhere close to the market share that IBM and HP split.  In spite of this, Gartner still classifies Dell in the “leaders” quadrant.  According to the report, “Dell offers Intel and AMD Opteron blade servers that are well-engineered, enterprise-class platforms that fit well alongside the rest of DelI’s x86 server portfolio, which has seen the company grow its market share steadily through the past 18 months.“

The report views that Dell’s strengths are:

• having a cross-selling opportunity to sell blades to their existing server, desktop and notebook customers
• aggressive pricing policies
• focused in innovating areas like cooling and virtual I/O

Dell’s “cautions” are reported as:

• having a limited portfolio that is targeted toward enterprise needs
• bad history of “patchy committment” to their blade platforms

It will be interesting to see where Dell takes their blade model.  It’s easy to have a low price model on entry level rack servers, but in a blade server infrastructure where standardization is key and integrated switches are a necessity having the lowest pricing may get tough.

IBM
Since 2002, IBM has ventured into the blade server marketplace with an wide variety of server and chassis offerings.  Gartner placed IBM in the “leaders” quadrant as well, although they place IBM much higher and to the right signifying a “greater ability to execute” and a “more complete vision.”  While IBM once had the lead in blade server market share, they’ve since handed that over to HP.  Gartner reports, “IBM is putting new initiatives in place to regain market share, including supply chain enhancements, dedicated sales resources and new channel programs.“ 

The report views that IBM’ strengths are:

• strong global market share
• cross selling opportunities to sell into existing IBM System x, System i, System p and System z customers
• broad set of chassis options that address specialized needs (like DC power & NEBS compliance for Telco) as well as Departmental / Enterprise
• blade server offerings for x86 and Power Processors
• strong record of management tools
• innovation around cooling and specialized workloads

Gartner only lists one “caution” for IBM and that is their loss of market share to HP since 2007.

HP
Gartner identifies HP as being in the farthest right in the October 2009 Magic Quadrant, therefore I’ll classify HP as being the #1 “leader.”  Gartner’s report says, “Since the 2006 introduction of its latest blade generation, HP has recaptured market leadership and now sells more blade servers than the rest of the market combined.”  Ironically, Gartner list of HP’s strengths is nearly identical to IBM:

• global blade market leader
• cross selling opportunities to sell into existing HP server, laptop and desktop customers
• broad set of chassis options that address Departmental and Enterprise needs
• blade server offerings for x86 and Itanium Processors
• strong record of management tools
• innovation around cooling and virtual I/O

Gartner only lists one “caution” for HP and that is their portfolio, as extensive as it may be, could be considered too complex and it could be too close to HP’s alternative, modular, rack-based offering.

Gartner’s report continues to discuss other niche players like Fujitsu, NEC and Hitachi, so if you are interesting in reading about them, check out the full report at 

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=4AA3-0100ENW.pdf.  All-in-all, Gartner’s report reaffirms that HP, IBM and Dell are the market leaders, for now, with Cisco coming up behind them.

Feel free to comment on this post and let me know what you think.

Afin de réduire les coûts d’exploitation de sa solution de gestion de la TVA, la DGFiP bascule vers un outil de compilation Cobol open source et des serveurs Itanium signés HP.

La direction générale des Finances publiques (DGFiP) vient de basculer vers les outils de compilation open source de l’éditeur Cobol-IT.

Ils sont dorénavant utilisés pour le logiciel de traitement de la TVA, écrit depuis ses débuts en Cobol. Le temps de compilation de deux millions de lignes de code passe d’une heure trente à seulement quinze minutes. Le choix de Cobol-IT Compiler Suite a été préconisé par HP, qui fournit les serveurs Itanium HP Integrity sur lesquels est déployée la solution de la DGFiP, ainsi que de nombreuses autres applications. Plus de 600 serveurs HP hébergent ainsi près de 850 services différents.

Le tout fonctionne avec une version Itanium d’HP-UX. La compagnie précise que le portage de l’application Cobol vers la solution de Cobol-IT s’est effectué sans heurt. Au final, la DGFiP est passée d’une solution écrite en Cobol, fonctionnant sur des serveurs HP Integrity PA-RISC, vers une offre Itanium et un compilateur open source. Ce changement a été motivé par des besoins de réduction de budget… en s’assurant toutefois de préserver la qualité de service.

Voilà donc une belle réussite pour le monde open source (et la jeune start-up française Cobol-IT), mais aussi une superbe vitrine pour les serveurs mission critical de nouvelle génération d’HP.

Source : Silicon

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BL2x220c G5 (2 server "nodes" shown)

HP’s BladeSystem server offering is quite extensive – everything from a 4 CPU Intel blade to an Itanium CPU blade, however their most well hidden, secret blade is their BL2×220c blade server.  Starting at $6,129, this blade server is an awesome feet of design because it is not just 1 server, it is 2 serversin 1 blade case – in a clam shell design (see below).  This means that in a HP C7000 BladeSystem chassis you could have 32 servers!    That’s 64 CPUs, 256 CORES, 2TB of RAM all in a 10U rack space.  That’s pretty impressive.  Let me break it down for you.  Each “node” on a single 2 node BL2×220c G5 server contains:

• Up to two Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® 5400 sequence processors
• Up to 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) of memory, supported by (4) slots of PC2-5300 Registered DIMMs, 667 MHz
• 1 non-hot plug small form factor SATA or Solid State hard drive
• Embedded Dual-port NC326i Gigabit Server Adapter
• One (1) I/O expansion slots via mezzanine card
• One (1) internal USB 2.0 connector for security key devices and USB drive keys

You may have noticed that this server is a “G5″ version and currently has the older Intel 5400 series processors.  Based on HP’s current blade offering, expect to see HP refresh of this server to a “G6″ model that will contain the Intel® Xeon® 5500 series processors.  Once that happens, I expect for more memoryslots to come with it, since the Intel® Xeon® 5500 series processors have 3 memory channels.  I’m guessing 12 memory slots “per node” or 24 memory slots per BL2×220c G6.  Purely speculation on my part, but it would make sense.  

Why do I consider this server to be one of HP’s best hidden secrets?  Simply because with that amount of server density, server processing power and server memory, the BL2×220c could become a perfect virtualization server.   Now if they’d only make a converged network adapter (CNA)…

Chipzilla gewährt der IT-Welt zwischen 11 und 19 Prozent Preisnachlass bei einer ganzen Reihe ihrer (alten) Prozessoren – um Platz zu schaffen für neue Ladenhüter Bestseller.

Vor allem die guten alten Desktop- und eine simple Server-CPU erhielten die regelmäßig wiederkehrende Rotstift-Behandlung. Die im folgenden erwähnten Dollar-Preise müssen System-Bastler und OEM-Partner zahlen, wenn sie sich eine Schachtel mit 1.000 Prozesssoren bestellen. Der Endverbraucher darf dafür selbstverständlich mehr ausspucken, doch meistens wird die Preissenkung weitgehend an ihm weitergereicht, dem Wettbewerb sei Dank.

Core 2 Quad:
* Q9400: 2,66 GHz, 1,3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 6 MB L2 Cache; 183 Dollar, minus 14 Prozent
* Q9300: 2,66 GHz, 1,3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 6 MB L2 Cache; 183 Dollar, minus 14 Prozent
* Q8400: 2,5 GHz, 1,3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 6 MB L2 Cache; 183 Dollar, minus 14 Prozent
* Q8300: 2,66 GHz, 1,3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 4 MB L2 Cache; 163 Dollar, minus 11 Prozent

Core 2 Quad Low-Power:
* Q9400S: 2,66 GHz, 1,3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 6 MB L2 Cache; 245 Dollar, minus 12 Prozent
* Q8400S: 2,66 GHz, 1,3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 4 MB L2 Cache; 213 Dollar, minus 13 Prozent

Core 2 Duo:
* E7500: 2,93 GHz, 1,07 GHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 3 MB L2 Cache; 113 Dollar, minus 15 Prozent

Pentium-Desktop-CPUs:
* E6300: 2,8 GHz, 1,07 GHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 2 MB L2 Cache; 81 Dollar, minus 14 Prozent
* E5400: 2,7 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 2 MB L2 Cache; 74 Dollar, minus 12 Prozent
* E5300: 2,6 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 2 MB L2 Cache; 64 Dollar, minus 14 Prozent

Celeron-CPU:
* E1500: 2,2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 512 KB L2 Cache; 43 Dollar, minus 19 Prozent

Xeon Uniprozessor für Server:
* X3330: 2,66 GHz, 1,3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 6 MB L2 Cache; 188 Dollar, minus 14 Prozent

Wie man sieht, hat Intel die Preisschilder seiner Core i7-Chips (Nehalem) und seiner Atom-Prozessoren nicht angerührt. Die verkaufen sich einfach zu gut. Auch die Server-Modelle der Xeon- und Itanium-Familien scheinen blendend zu laufen. Vor allem das Mittelfeld und die FSB-Technologie müssen raus, um bis zum Schlussquartal Platz für die neue Westmere-Generation zu schaffen. [rm]

[The Register]

Relatório do IDC afirma que os servidores baseados no Intel® Itanium 2 está em uma fase de espansão. Feito com base em entrevistas feitas com 501 membros do Painel de Clientes de Servidores Corporativos da IDC, relatou alta satisfação dos clientes e uma  intenção de compra de servidores baseados nesta tecnologia.  Também constatou que aproximadamente 66% dos clientes de servidores HP PA-RISC que participaram da pesquisa pretendem migrar para a plataforma Itanium.

www.hp.com/latam/br/pyme/novidades/apr_novidades_02.html

Wäre der technische Fortschritt das, was er vorgibt zu sein (nämlich Fortschritt), wäre unser Leben um einiges langweiliger, da man sich nicht über echte und vermeintliche Irrwege streiten könnte.

Eine schöne Diskussionsvorlage hat gerade PC Authority mit einer Top 10-Liste der  enttäuschendsten Technologien vorgelegt. Platz 1 geht (nicht übermäßig originell) an Windows Vista, aber der Weg an die Spitze ist mit interessanten Überlegungen gepflastert.Und während die drei Spitzenplätze (neben Vista noch Zune und Itanium) irgendwie noch so wirken, als habe man mal wieder die Großen im Geschäft bashen wollen, kann man sich über den Rest wohl gut streiten:

Platz 4: Bluetooth (wg. Inkompatibilität)

Platz 5: FireWire (wg. mangelnder Marktstärke)

Platz 6: 10GB Ethernet (kommt einfach nicht)

Platz 7: Apple Lisa (wg. Preis)

Platz 8: Spracherkennung (funktioniert nicht, sondern stört)

Platz 9: Alternative Suchmaschinen (kommen einfach nicht an Google vorbei)

Platz 10: Virtual Reality (prima Idee, schlecht realisiert).

Nicht platziert, aber ehrenhaft erwähnt sind Ubuntu ( vollmundige Versprechungen, hat aber den Markt nicht verändert) und Biometrie (wurde als Schutzmaßnahme verkauft, will aber keiner).

Hm. Schöne Liste, prima Gesprächsstoff für die Mittagspause, aber durchaus diskutabel. Ich selbst hätte z.B. RFID dazugenommen.

Wer sich für die jeweilige Argumentation interessiert, kann dem Link zum (umfänglichen) Artikel bei PC Authority folgen; ansonsten heißt es wie immer: Und Ihre Meinung, lieber Leser? [dieter]

[PC Authority via Slashdot]

I generally don’t talk about CPU architectures since it seems to be something you really care about or something you pretty much ignore. As you an guess I really find CPU architectures rather interesting. In the past I wrote about an article talking about Itanium not living up to its promise and guess what it’s still not. Though it is used for process intensive systems (same that SPARC is used for) it really still is a niche chip. The good news is this niche chip is at least growing in sales. I don’t care if some people think it’s dying cause I think it has more then enough life in it. Not to mention the fact that some of the best OSs out there run on it (OpenVMS and many of the nixes oh and don’t forget Windows Server) so it is not like SPARC which offers less in the way of compatibility. So I guess what I am saying is this article is probably right though I think its a bit to negative on Itanium though I might be saying this since I have a soft spot for alternate CPU architectures.

Links:

• The Register

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When launching the latest Xeon server chip, Intel conveniently omitted to talk about its “other” server family, the Itanium.

Probably because Itanium has simply not lived up to the expectation Intel – and others – set forth, almost 15 years ago.

Then Itanium was predicted to dominate the server business, and then trickle down to eventually get into desktops and notebooks. And ultimately replace the X86 architecture altogether, recalls chip analyst Nathan Brookwood.

Well, obviously that didn’t happen and never will even if all of the major server suppliers like H-P, Unisys, Hitachi, NEC, Silicon Graphics – but to the exception of Sun and IBM – have adopted Itanium as their mainframe alternative platform.

“Itanium has become the prefered plaftorm for the also rans in the server business,” quipped Brookwood.

Despite its commercial failure, Intel still wants to hang on to Itanium. And that’s because, Itanium is the only server chip in Intel’s arsenal that can actually compete with the reliability and scalability of its rival RISC-processors like Sun’s SPARC or IBM’s POWER. “[Itanium] is delivering to that very high end mission critical market segment,” explained Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s vice president in charge of the server business.

However, to lower development costs, Intel decided to converge the Itanium platform to the Xeon platform (chipset, QPI’s fast interconnect…). “That will happen when the next generation of the Itanium chip, Tukwila, will launch [probably later this year],” adds Brookwood.

The good news for enterprise customers and the server OEMs like H-P, is that Itanium is not going away. The bad news for Intel, is that it will never be a growth opportunity.

Here’s an excerpt of Brookwood’s comments on Itanium:

Xen 5500 (Nehalem) is Intel's new challenge to RISC processors

Time for a quick reality check on Intel’s comparison of the Nehalem server chip – unveiled at a press briefing today – and its RISC-based rivals.

If you believe Intel’s surreal price/performance numbers shown today, you wonder how CIOs today can still keep their jobs and continue buying IBM and Sun RISC-based servers.

1. Intel Xeon vs. Sun SPARC: 1.7 times the performance for less than half the cost;
2. Intel Xeon vs. IBM POWER: 2.5 times the performance for 1/10th the cost.

“Enterprises spend 40 percent of their budgets into proprietary environments such as SPARC or POWER RISC-systems. These are expensive, proprietary, evolving more slowly, typically carry higher maintenance costs, software licensing costs, etc [...] Comparing to the IBM POWER environment, its almost humorous,” quipped Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group. “It’s time to start a major refresh out of the proprietary world!”

So I asked chip analyst, Nathan Brookwood, for some explanations. What really happens is that enterprises buy large IBM POWER, Sun SPARC and even Itanium servers for their reliability, scalability, the software they run, etc. Things that Intel’s latest Xeon server chip can’t match.

Along with those very large systems, enterprises also buy smaller SPARC/POWER/Itanium servers, to use in their branch offices. But why?

“Because of compatibility. Enterprises are not buying the small RISC-based for their performance, but because they use the same software than their very large RISC-based systems, which simplifies IT management,” explains Brookwood of analyst firm, Insight64.

So as long as Intel Xeon chips are cantoned at the low-end of the server market, RISC-based chipmakers – like IBM or Sun – have little to worry of the Santa Clara, Calif.-company nibbling on their market.

Unless of course, there’s a renewed effort from Intel behind Itanium!

Here’s a short video excerpt of Gelsinger comparing today the latest Intel Xeon server chip with IBM’s and Sun’s:

And here’s Brookwood’s take on Intel’s RISC comparison:

Intel’s Itanium processor has been around for what feels like ages, but clearly the chip maker isn’t ready to retire the name and move on to something different just yet. We’ve just learned that the latest iteration of the Itanium, which has been codenamed Tukwila, won’t begin shipping as soon as previously expected. According to a company spokesman: The “RISC-based server processor was scheduled to ship early this year. However, Intel decided to push back the release by several months in order to add capabilities. The processor itself is fine, but Intel has made the decision to add some engineering enhancements.”

So, what capabilities could be so important, you ask? The most vital enhancement causing the delay is compatibility with DDR3 memory chips, which — quite honestly — seems like something a chip shipping in 2009 simply must include. The DDR3 standard enables support for a maximum memory module size of 16GB, and considering that no amount of RAM is really enough (particularly in the server world), adding support for said protocol is probably a smart move. Furthermore, Tukwila is seeing compatibility added for the “same motherboard socket that will be used in future Itanium chips, codenamed Poulson and Kittson.” By tossing this in, Intel is assuring prospective buyers that they can upgrade easily to those future chips without having to also purchase a new motherboard. A classy move, and one’s that equally beneficial for Intel.

We’d have to agree with the aforementioned spokesman when he stated that “these moves are definitely in the Itanium customer interests,” and while any delay is unfortunate, this seems like one we can actually respect and appreciate. Look for the quad-core Itanium — complete with eleventh hour extras — to ship sometime around mid-2009 if these most recent plans hold firm.

John C. Dvorak (a guy I read an listen to often) posted a article a few days ago that I just finally read labeled “How the Itanium Killed the Computer Industry” and reading it a bunch of lights went off in my head. Overall Dvorak is very correct with this article and gets a good point across. I think he is right that the Itanium had a huge affect on the CPU industry. I think he does miss another major reason though. Windows is tied to the x86 architecture. This is actually one of the major reasons that no other architecture has survived. Windows drives a lot of computer sales (look at return rates on Linux Netbooks). I agree though that sticking to the old and hopefully dying x86 and the new tacked on AMD64 architecture is stupid and only hutting the industry. Personally I am hoping Sun can rebuild the SPARC brand sometime soon the T2 is an amazing processor. Unfortunately i think the key gains in opposition processors will be by ARM and in the Netbook market since Linux runs on ARM and it’s cheap and prevalent these days since its already in all our cell phones. Overall READ Dvorak’s article its a good one so I’m guna link to it again just to make sure you READ THIS ARTICLE!

8086: The First PC processor

The 8086 was the first x86 processor—Intel had already released the 4004, the 8008, the 8080 and the 8085. This 16-bit processor could manage 1 MB of memory using an external 20-bit address bus. The clock frequency chosen by IBM (4.77 MHz) was fairly low, though the processor was running at 10 MHz by the end of its career.

The first PCs used a derivative of this processor, the 8088, which had only an 8-bit (external) data bus. An interesting aside is that the control systems in the US space shuttles use 8086 processors and NASA was forced to buy some from eBay in 2002 since Intel could no longer supply them.

Introducirse en las entrañas del supercomputador Finis Terrae es algo parecido a miniaturizar a un ser humano y dar un paseo entre los componentes de nuestro PC. En realidad, como con cualquier otro ordenador, tiene sus discos duros, su memoria RAM, su procesador y sus cables. Hasta la ‘marca’ es familiar, puesto que su diseño lleva el sello de HP e Intel. “Lo que lo hace diferente es, no sólo su tamaño, sino su arquitectura”, matiza el físico Andrés Gómez Tato, responsable de aplicaciones y proyectos del Centro de Supercomputación de Galicia (CESGA).

Por un lado, están las unidades de proceso. Si nuestro PC cuenta con dos, cuatro u ocho núcleos, el Finis Terrae suma 2.500. Ésta es la parte dedicada a acometer las tareas y está distribuida a lo largo de 48 armarios. Son procesadores Itanium 2 de Intel a 1,6 GHz.

En segundo lugar, y complementariamente a estos procesadores, está la memoria. Si ya cada uno de los anteriores cuenta con 128 GB, las llamadas unidades Superdome alcanzan el Terabyte (más de 1.000 Gigabytes) de memoria en imagen única. Todas estas unidades funcionan bajo sistema operativo GNU/Linux.

En tercer término, el almacenamiento. Hasta 864 discos duros S-ATA de 250 Gigabytes de capacidad…sigue

Una memoria prodigiosa

De todo lo anterior, lo que define al Finis Terrae es su memoria. A diferencia del ordenador Mare Nostrum del Centro Nacional de Supercomputación de Barcelona, “está centrado en cálculos que requieren constantes consultas a datos previamente almacenados“. El catalán, con el sello IBM, es superior en capacidad de proceso, pero no alcanza su memoria. “De hecho diseñamos el Finis Terrae pensando en ser un complemento al Mare Nostrum”.

Al poner en relación la memoria con su rendimiento, el Finis Terrae se convierte en el supercomputador más poderoso de Europa, por encima del de la Universidad de Leipzig o el de Edimburgo…sigue

LEER mas elmundo.es