Newsmaker: Big Blue's big-iron x86 backer

Susan Whitney has endured major changes in the half decade she's spent at the helm of IBM's Intel-based server business. But one thing has remained constant in her tenure: Big Blue's commitment to big-iron x86 servers.

Intel's Xeon chip--the leading x86 model for servers, despite growing competition from Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron--is used chiefly in small dual-processor machines. But IBM believes that Xeon also is good for the massive multiprocessor systems residing at the heart of business computing operations.

IBM sells machines with as many as 32 dual-core Xeon processors. That approach starkly contrasts with the two companies ahead of IBM in the x86 server market, No. 1 Hewlett-Packard and No. 2 Dell, who both withdrew eight-processor servers and now sell machines with four at maximum.

Dell thinks the high end of the server market will move to clusters of smaller systems. HP believes that large server tasks are best handled by servers using Intel's Itanium chip, which has reliability features and data transfer speeds that Xeon lacks.

The only player with a philosophy similar to IBM's is Sun Microsystems, which got x86 religion rather late in the game. But Sun's x86 servers still are expected to top out at eight processors, and Sun uses Opteron chips, a decision IBM disfavors. Its high-end x86 systems link chips together with the x3 chipset, which works only with Xeon.

Whitney talked with CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland about her big-iron strategy, IBM's coolness toward AMD and other issues.

Q: What happened in 2005 with IBM's xSeries servers, and what does 2006 hold?
Whitney: When I think about last year, what I'm most excited about is clearly our blade server growth. In the third quarter, we remained in the leadership position. It is extremely efficient from a power and cooling perspective, and that remains one of the big issues that we talk about when I sit across from customers.

I'm also excited about the ecosystem we're building. We have 350 partners working to bring IBM content to our BladeCenter. We've opened the specs, and an additional 300 industry participants have downloaded the specs to create content for BladeCenter.

Also, with our x3 architecture, we can go from two-way to a 32-way system with the Intel-based Xeon architecture. That opens up a ton of opportunities.

Q: The vast majority of the x86 servers are smaller machines. Why is IBM pushing x86 big iron?
Whitney: I see many customers, usually global customers. The high-end x86 servers have three main uses: SQL Server 2005, SAP (finance software) and customers slicing and dicing (to replace many small servers with one large one). What I hear is they were waiting for SQL Server 2005 64-bit. Now that they have it, they're looking for server choices. A lot of customers are looking at their SAP implementations and deciding where they are going to go.

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[scoobbs]

The same old way...

We see the world our way.
We want the world to move at our pace.
What´s ours is the best. Of anything. At any time.
We invented the PC market.
We also lost it to people who see the world their way and who wanted to do better and cheaper, focusing not only on present profits.
Sounds familiar? Well, for a dinosaur, like me, it´s just the same old IBM.
Maybe 5 years is too much time for an executive in this industry.
PS: we also made the Power PC. We sold it to Apple. Than, of course, we lost the business to Intel...(and the prestige that goes with Apple)...
It´s endless.

[whitiing]

Missing out on Opteron ...

I think IBM is missing out on the AMD Opteron market. I don't think IBM wants to have such a good performing x64 chip to compete across the board with the rest of their own 64 bit servers, Intel isn't there yet with performance and they are hot chips. For a mostly IBM shop I went to Sun for an Opteron SQL 2005 server.

[freq]

what a waste....

I got to use a quad p-pro system last year.. it was part of a junk pile acquired by a friend... I think the machines were from Boeing... anyhow... the quad-ppro could hardly run srvr2k3....... and the monsters were all rack-mount and wighed a tone... Compaqs...if the machines were desktop "weight" I could probably put them to use with some router distro.... i am a jr. dianasour (10yrs 29yrold)... but I have been around plenty of rackmount stuff and I think its a total waste... cause mostly, the bastards who can afford the stuff have way too much money and get con'd into thinking thats what is necessary..... by some sales person.... yet, the sys-admin is like drooling... I have seen it way to often...

rackmount stuff needs a new formfacter.... or just lease the stuff.... on actual usage.....