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We have
seen the first signs of weakness in Intel's hegemony on processors. The 64-bit
computing walls have begin to crumble over the past year. Back then, Intel made
a mistake when it came out with its new 64-bit Itanium chips that used
different instruction sets from the prior x86 line. Ever since then the
competition has grown in this space and now system builders have, for the first
time in a long while, real choices when it comes to what lies at the heart of
their highest-powered machines:
-
AMD's
Opteron. This preserves the original x86 instruction set and adds their own
extensions in terms of clustering and multi-processor performance enhancements.
Sun and HP have begun taking advantage of these extensions in their server
lines, and expect more news on this front as these two vendors build new
machines based on Opterons.
-
IBM's
PowerPC. This continues to just chug along without too much fanfare. I am
impressed with the breadth and depth of the PowerPC line. It has a wide range
of chips that can handle everything from the highest-density supercomputers to
low-end embedded processors.
-
And
Intel itself. Earlier this month, they announced a new line of 64-bit
processors that basically turns back the clock and re-embraces its older
instruction set, hedging its 64-bit bets both ways.
Part of
Intel's problem is that machines are cheap these days, and that the cost
differential for Itanium are pretty steep: $2,000 can buy you a lot of server
horsepower, or a terrific desktop with better than average workstation
features, for non-Intel 64-bit CPUs. The Itaniums can cost five or more times
as much.
Look at
Apple as a good case in point: The
most successful 64-bit adoption rate has got to be here, with the Apple G5 line
of desktops and servers. The innards of these machines are truly a joy to
behold ñ and this coming from a guy that likes to keep the covers off his
equipment not because they are beautiful to look at but for practical reasons.
To make things even more interesting, Apple just came out with their own
multiprocessor 64-bit XServe rack-mounted server line that is one of best
values for the money for a high-availability, high-horsepower machine.
AMD is
talking about four-way servers selling for less than $5,000 by next spring ñ
this is a price point that Intel will have a hard time matching.
Added to
the cheap supply of machines is a growing talent pool of white box builders who
can assemble some very impressive clusters of machines: see the report I did in
April on the Flash Mob assembling their own cluster out of donated equipment.
Granted, much of this gear wasn't 64-bit, but it could be, and several of the world's fastest
supercomputers are now routinely assembled from non-Intel gear.
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Another
issue is the growing trend that the low-volume system builder is doing more
innovation than the big guys at Dell, HP, and elsewhere in terms of making
better servers. It used to be that white boxes were more popular on desktops
than in the server rooms. Those IT shops that were willing to take chances on
no-name gear weren't willing to run their servers on them. That has changed,
and now it is safe for the white box to come into those raised-floor air
conditioned computing palaces. Research at my sister publication CRN shows that
the server white box market share has come at the expense of HP, who has lost 7
percentage points on their recent surveys year over year:
http://www.crn.com/sections/hardfacts/hardfact.asp?ArticleID=50215
But the
biggest issue for Intel is a loss of credibility over Itanium, and a growing
dissatisfaction with their domination over this marketplace. As AMD and IBM
continue to add new technologies here, they have lost the leading edge
mindshare on the high-end. The Opteron architecture is really optimized to
handle multi-processing, and IBM's miserly power requirements means that large
piles of CPUs won't need to be cooled as much as the others, making it easier to
build more complex systems.
Will
Intel be able to recapture this market? Will Itanium ever be more than a
diversion for most system builders? I have my doubts. AMD didn't name its
64-bit chips Hammer for nothing.
Entire
contents copyright 2004 by David Strom, Inc.
David
Strom, dstrom@cmp.com, +1 (516) 562-7151
Port
Washington NY 11050
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