Cluster Computing:

IBM INCREASES PERFORMANCE & FUNCTIONALITY TO UNIX SERVERS

IBM on October 16 introduced new UNIX Server solutions that provide uncompromising value and further increased performance, functionality and systems management capabilities for businesses seeking on-demand functionality.

The announcement includes the following:

• The introduction of the IBM pSeries High Performance Switch (HPS).

The HPS provides greater communication bandwidth and decreases the latency for p655 and p690 servers being used in the eServer Cluster 1600 environment. HPS supports up to 16 p690 or p655 servers, and will support up to 64 p690 or p655 servers in mid 2004.

The pSeries High Performance Switch -- based on the proven technology and architecture of the IBM SP Switch2 -- is a cluster interconnect designed to support the most computationally and memory-bandwidth intensive applications in science and engineering, including weather and climate modeling, high-end quantum physics, computational chemistry, crash analysis and reservoir modeling. It will help customers solve larger problems faster and increase the accuracy of their most demanding computational models.

New 2-Link Switch Network Interface (SNI) and 4-Link Switch Network Interface cards provide network connections to the HPS from the GX buses in p655 and p690 servers. The SNI cards occupy selected GX bus slots, which are used in other p655 and p690 configurations for attaching IBM I/O Drawers.

• New 2-way IBM eServer p615 POWER4+ system powered with a 1.45 GHz processor.

This system utilizes attributes of the larger high-end p690 systems, and gives businesses an even more powerful entry-level solution that they can use in either AIX or Linux express configurations.

Using the fastest available SCSI interface, maximum I/O data transfer rates of p615 servers have been doubled to 320 MBps, helping to improve performance for data-intensive applications. The IBM pSeries entry-class portfolio continues to push the limits in capability and cost effectiveness.

• New Capacity BackUp (CBU) offerings for the high-end 16-way p670 and 32-way p690 servers.

Customers have access to an on demand Capacity BackUp (CBU) solution for the high end 16-way p670 and 32-way p690 servers to address incremental capacity requirements as a result of lost or limited capacity elsewhere in the enterprise. Now customers can address disaster recovery, without system interruption, at a significant cost savings compared to traditional backup server solutions.

The pSeries CBU offerings for the p670 and p690 servers are specially priced and implemented with Capacity Upgrade on Demand (CUoD) technology. CUoD allows instant activation of dormant processors and the ability to test dormant processors on a regular basis; no monitoring or reporting is required.

• Upgrades to IBM Cluster Systems Management (CSM) software on AIX 5L on pSeries, Linux on pSeries and Linux on IBM xSeries.

IBM Cluster Systems Management (CSM) software for installing, operating and maintaining server clusters, is now available for three platforms - AIX 5L on pSeries, Linux on pSeries, and Linux on xSeries. CSM provides remote hardware control, utilities for administering software updates across all servers in the cluster, cluster-wide resource monitoring tools and automatic triggers that can be used to alert system managers or initiate corrective actions when problems occur.

• Ultra320 SCSI Support.

Ultra320 SCSI adapters, disk drives, disk backplane support and external storage subsystems are now available for pSeries servers. Ultra320 SCSI, the latest industry-standard storage interface technology, transfers data using the SCSI protocol over a 16 bit wide low voltage differential (LVD) bus at speeds up to 320 MBps - twice the maximum data transfer rate of Ultra3 SCSI.

IBM is responding to demand for higher performing Unix server solutions with ever-increasing performance, functionality and product offerings.