Dell announces four-processor Itanium-based PowerEdge serverAustin 22 May 2001 Dell plans to deliver an Intel Itanium-based PowerEdge server. The PowerEdge 7150, available later this year, is a rack dense server designed from the ground up to offer the performance, availability, management and scalability characteristics of proprietary RISC architectures, but at a fraction of the cost, Dell claims.
The PowerEdge 7150 will be capable of supporting up to four 733
MHz or 800 MHz Intel Itanium Processors, up to 64 GB of memory and up
to four hot-plug, redundant hard drives for up to 144 GB of internal
storage.
According to Intel, early tests reveal that Itanium-based servers
significantly outperform some of the fastest proprietary RISC-based
systems when running high-end applications that provide security for
Internet commerce transactions. Additionally, servers based on Intel's
industry-standard technology typically are less expensive to purchase
and operate than proprietary systems because of the large number of
software vendors, service providers and consultants that exist to
support them.
The Itanium processor and its 64-bit architecture extend the
capabilities of Intel servers by exponentially increasing the amount
of memory that the microprocessor can interact with, meaning the
system is able to process more information at a faster rate than ever
before. Additionally, the new processor enhances floating-point
performance, the system's ability to perform complex calculations, for
faster execution in scientific applications, such as in engineering
programs used for modeling and testing. The new processor incorporates
error-correcting technology, known as machine check architecture,
which enhances the system's ability to compensate for processing
errors automatically and ensures greater levels of availability and
data integrity.
A major impetus compelling customers to migrate from proprietary
RISC/UNIX systems to Itanium-based systems running Windows or Linux
will be strong industry support and the availability of applications
for the new architecture, says Dell. Dell is collaborating with Intel,
independent software vendors (ISVs) and customers to ensure market
readiness for its new PowerEdge 7150 servers. The company is working
with more than 20 leading software companies, such as IBM DB2, SAP and
Veritas Software to convert applications for use on Itanium servers
and has placed pilot systems with more than 25 customers, including
Cornell University, Motorola and Nasdaq. Dell is contributing to the
development of 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows and Red
Hat Linux with feedback from field-based customer testing and
will offer these operating systems when they become available.
Nasdaq is testing a prototype Dell PowerEdge 7150 system for two
classes of mission critical applications. The first is a class of
memory intensive applications used to replicate and distribute stock
market data on an internal data "pipeline." The second class of
applications deploy Microsoft SQL Server in support of Nasdaq's ever
growing Internet and intranet presence. According to Gregor Bailar,
executive vice president and chief information officer, Nasdaq, "With
daily transaction volumes on our network peaking at more than three
billion shares per day, we are looking for systems that will support
those transaction volumes and our need to access huge amounts of data
dynamically. We expect the Itanium-based systems to allow us to grow
our capacity and be responsive to our customers, while lowering our
cost of ownership and administration."
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