IBM LAUNCHES NEW LINE OF UNIX PRODUCTS AND PROGRAMS

September 17, 1999

COMMERCIAL NEWS

Somers, NY — IBM has launched a dynamic lineup of UNIX products and programs for customers ranging from fast growing service providers and “NetGen” companies to the data centers of large corporations. IBM said this massive commitment will vault the company ahead of Sun Microsystems as the leader in UNIX technology and performance.

Specifically, IBM is:

— using its innovative copper chip technology to deliver the RS/6000 S80, reportedly the world’s most powerful e-business UNIX server;

— introducing a powerful “thin” RS/6000 server for fast growing Internet and application service providers;

— garnering widespread support from leading software developers;

— extending AIX’s leadership as a powerful UNIX e-business platform and adding the ability to run most Linux applications;

— strengthening the RS/6000 SP with new, more powerful nodes;

— opening four new Project Monterey porting centers;

— as previously announced, merging with Sequent, the worldwide leader in NUMA technology.

“When UNIX customers look for the world’s best e-business solutions, they’ll find them at IBM,” said Rod Adkins, IBM general manager of RS/6000. “IBM has new technology, new products, new partnerships and a new attitude. We’re serious about UNIX and we’re going to prove it.”

IBM is bringing together servers, technology, software, storage, partnerships and financing in what the company said was its most significant UNIX announcement ever.

RS/6000 S80: The 64-bit RS/6000 S80 uses up to 24 microprocessors built with IBM’s innovative copper chip technology to set new world records for Web serving, Java performance and enterprise resource planning (ERP). The RS/6000 S80 more than triples the performance of the RS/6000 S70 Advanced. IBM’s 24 copper chips also surpass the performance of servers from Sun that use up to 64 microprocessors. In addition, a Sun E10000 with 64 microprocessors and 64 gigabytes (GB) of memory costs about 50 percent more than an RS/6000 S80 with 24 microprocessors and 64 GB of memory.

The S80, with its leading Web performance, is designed to meet the rigorous demands of enterprise applications, such as ERP, business intelligence and customer relationship management. which are rapidly evolving to the Web.

IBM also introduced the RS/6000 HA-S80, a clustered version of the S80 for customers requiring the industry’s best high-availability UNIX solution.

RS/6000 B50: Code-named Pizzazz, the IBM RS/6000 B50 — along with its companion, the Netfinity 4000R — is built expressly for the needs of Internet and application service providers. Its low cost, rack-mountable form factor along with attractive terms and conditions are tailored to the needs of these fast-growing businesses. At just 3.5-inches high, the B50 fits easily into an industry-standard rack. B50 features a choice of operating systems including AIX and Linux and a variety of popular service provider applications such as Web hosting, firewall, caching and messaging.

Complementing the RS/6000 B50 is an aggressively priced, high-density storage subsystem, the 2104 Expandable Storage Plus (ESP), code-named Oyster. With this new storage solution, a single 5.25-inch, rack-mountable drawer gives service providers more than 1/3 of a terabyte of data storage, enough to store three floors of academic journals at a university library. To ensure maximum uptime, and provide uninterrupted growth, additional disk drives and drawers can be added while the system is running. Redundant power and cooling also is available. An integrated B50-ESP solution is ideal where Web serving performance and storage capacity are critical business success factors.

New RS/6000 POWER3 SMP nodes and T70 Technical Server: Both commercial and scientific customers using the IBM RS/6000 SP now can upgrade to even more powerful POWER3 SMP nodes. Compared with their predecessors, the new nodes deliver:

— four times the number of processors

— four times the memory

— eight times the peak memory bandwidth

— 18 times the maximum disk capacity

— 26 times the number of I/O adapters compared with their predecessors.

These nodes are ideal for solving large scientific problems or for complex decision support.

The RS/6000 T70 Technical Server uses the new POWER3 SMP nodes in a compact form factor and is ideal as a departmental server for handling numeric- and I/O-intensive applications such as computer-aided engineering, computational chemistry and seismic analysis.

Software support: In addition to IBM, more than 35 leading software developers, including Oracle and SAP, are announcing support for the new RS/6000 lineup.

AIX 4.3.3: Included in the new release of AIX, IBM’s top-rated UNIX operating system, is the AIX Workload Manager, offering features derived from IBM’s mainframe servers. It simplifies system management for users who choose to consolidate multiple workloads onto a single RS/6000 server. Workload Manager uses a customer-defined set of business priorities to direct system resources to key workloads, allowing customers to smoothly manage unpredictable demand, such as spikes in Internet traffic. This will allow ISPs, for example, to manage quality of service levels among different applications so they can improve their compliance with service level agreements.

IBM also announced plans to deliver the ability to run most Linux applications on RS/6000s with AIX 4.3.3 in the first half of next year. This capability will be delivered as a no-charge, open-source download.

Project Monterey: IBM will open a Project Monterey porting center in San Mateo, California this fall. Three additional porting centers — in Waltham, Massachusetts; Hursley, England and Stuttgart, Germany — are expected to begin operation next year.

Project Monterey is an IBM-led initiative to develop an enterprise-ready, high-volume UNIX that runs on IBM and Intel microprocessors.

At the centers, software developers may port and tune applications for today’s Monterey products including IBM’s AIX and SCO’s UnixWare, and may also prepare their applications for migration to Monterey for forthcoming Intel IA-64 processors. IBM will outfit the centers with IBM RS/6000 and Netfinity servers along with servers from other hardware vendors.

Solution Series for ERP: IBM also announced today it is extending its Solution Series for ERP — a two-year performance protection plan for ERP software running on RS/6000 — to ERP programs from PeopleSoft and QAD. Under this plan, IBM will provide customers with additional processor or memory upgrades — or both — if a covered RS/6000-ERP solution doesn’t perform as agreed.

Merger with Sequent: On July 12, IBM announced it entered into a merger agreement with Sequent. Sequent is an acknowledged leader in systems based on NUMA (non-uniform memory access) architecture. NUMA is advanced hardware and software that allows large numbers of processors to operate as a single system while maintaining the ease of programming and manageability of a small system.

The completion of the merger is subject to Sequent shareholders and regulatory approvals.

For more information visit http://www.rs6000.ibm.com

============================================================

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire