PowerPC 970s in IBM's New Blades

[MacRumors]

As first reported by ThinkSecret (http://www.thinksecret.com/news/ibmblade.html), IBM has released information on its new PowerPC 970 / Linux based BladeCenter JS20 (http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-53431) Servers.

The upcoming JS20 Blade servers offer a high density server option allowing up to 14 hot-swap JS20 blades within 7U of rackspace. Each blade is equipped with two 1.6GHz PowerPC 970 processors for a total of 28 PowerPC 970s in the same 7U space.

According to TheRegister (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/33953.html) the system will not be available until late Q1 of 2004 and will be priced at $2699. eWeek had reported (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/07/20030718144358.shtml) that IBM would be using the 970 in their low-end servers and anticipated an updated 970 by mid 2004.

Apple is still expected to update their 1U server offering (Xserve) to a G5 processor.

[Powerbook G5]

That sounds like a pretty sweet deal for that kind of configuration.

[arn]

Picture of a blade server

http://www.ibm.com/news/cz/2002/10/blade.jpg

I guess this is encouraging for Xserve G5s. (in terms of form factor)

I wouldn't read much else into this. IBM's always planned to use the 970s in their own servers.

arn

[ITR 81]

Looks like a Dual G5 Xserve may just be around the corner. I wonder if OSX will run on those machines??

[szark]

Very interesting case design.

The visual tour accessible from this page (http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/bladecenter/chassis/more_info.html#) gives a very good look at the architecture of the BladeCenter.

[stingerman]

Could it be that IBM's 970 blade release will coincide with Apple selling an IBM blade server version of OS X Server. When it comes to the server market, Apple seems to make a lot more money on 999 / server license than actually selling and maintaining hardware servers. I mean this as in addition to the 1U xServe G5.

[IndyGopher]

Machines like that are why I buy lottery tickets. Well, that, and maybe a pair of T3's or an OC12 line run to the house.

[G4scott]

Is there any chance that Apple and IBM would do some kind of joint server project? Hardware co-developed by IBM and Apple to run Apple's server software?

I don't know how plausible of an idea this is, but it could bring some good results...

[base80]

...

[vannote]

In the 'PowerMac G5 Revision in Jan 2004' discussion, I mentioned that this might be a precursor to a Apple Xserve G5.

But the more I think about it, I can't help but wonder if IBM (while cutting the 970 deal) asked Apple to back-off on the server market with these processors and that they would supply a configuration that ran OS X Server.

Pure speculation of course.

[Photorun]

And may I add DANG!!! At what a price! C'mon Apple, give us them G5 Xserves... certainly it looks like it'll all fit!

[silvergunuk]

Is this the right time to start XGrid rumours?

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by base80
I think the 970 is a processor with a vector unit owned by Apple IBM and Moto. So these can not be used for a IBM branded product.That's an interesting thought. This is what IBM thinks (http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-53431):

"Each JS20 blade contains two PowerPC 970 processors for a total of 28 processors for each BladeCenter. Redundant components round out the system to provide the high-availability levels needed for today's enterprise server applications."

No offence, but I'll take IBM's opinion over yours in this case.

-Richard

ps: Note that your logic, as stated, would also preclude it from being used in an Apple branded product...

[Henriok]

Originally posted by base80
I think the 970 is a processor with a vector unit owned by Apple IBM and Moto. So these can not be used for a IBM branded product. IBM _IS_ using PowerPC 970 in a IBM branded product, that's that this news was all about. Both IBM and Motorola have used various PowerPC-models in products of their own. IBM's server/workstation series RS/6000 (now pSeries) was powered for a long time with 601 and 604-processors (they even did a laptop running OS/2 and Windows NT!). Motorola even made a Mac clone.

And.. IBM as the 970 design up for licensing so anyone with some money can license it and manufacture it by them selves.. and probably do some modifications too. If I remember correctly all three copanies, Apple. Motorola and IBM has the complete rights to sell further licenses to whomever they chose. IBM and Motorola has done this earlier with many types PowerPC-processors. Currently Xilinx and Tundra are doing this and I expect that companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing et al are doing it too.. doing specially designed embedded PowerPCs for militairy purposes with modifications like extreme temperature durability and radiation hardening.
PowerPC is _really_ large in this market.

And.. IBM and Apple doesn't play on the same market for products like this. I can't see any agreement between them dividing markets. I suspect that the discussions when doing the 970 design went in the quite opposite direction: How can we best take a real bite out of the x86-market?

Apple will release Xserve G5 when is passes quality control (can't be to long now).

[ITR 81]

I doubt it because if it'll run Linux I doubt it wouldn't run OSX. If not someone will make a hack for it. Does anyone know what the contract between Apple and IBM is? and to what extent could hardware be used by both companies? I don't think anyone knows except IBM and Apple. I have feeling both IBM and Apple want to take a big bite out of the MS market.

If Apple allows OSX server to be used on IBM's blade server then I could see IBM going for different server markets and Apple going for slightly different server maket. If this is successful I could see a IBM workstation using OSX.

I'm just thinking out loud but it does seem like both would benifit from this type of relationship. IBM sells cheaper server with Apple OS support. Apple gets increased sales of it's OS and other apps/ a bigger presence to public and IT.
Hell what says the next Xserve is nothing more then Apple case and OS and IBM internals?

[Sun Baked]

>base80

The PPC970 is the Power4 spinoff. And IBM has been saying they will be using the processor in servers in the future.

With a very strong possibility of the chips replacing the 604e/Power3 used in the workstation line.

The only question of using a spinoff of the PPC970 in the Xbox would be one of unit cost -- while the PPC750s and cell processors were aimed at low cost systems.

[idea_hamster]

Originally posted by szark
The visual tour accessible from this page (http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/bladecenter/chassis/more_info.html#) gives a very good look at the architecture of the BladeCenter.
I noticed that they make a point of noting that every one of these has a 48x CD drive and a -- you guessed it! -- 1.44MB floppy drive! "The floppy is dead! Long live the floppy!" Now, I can imagine that a floppy might be useful ... but I can't figure out how ...:confused:

[vannote]

Originally posted by ITR 81
Hell what says the next Xserve is nothing more then Apple case and OS and IBM internals?

Although, IBM currently states that the blades will only ship with Linux, I am sure someone will adjust Darwin's hardware support layer in short order.

[Tim Flynn]

Originally posted by Macrumors
The upcoming JS20 Blade servers offer a high density server option allowing up to 14 hot-swap JS20 blades within 7U of rackspace. Each blade is equipped with two 1.6GHz PowerPC 970 processors for a total of 28 PowerPC 970s in the same 7U space.

I assume Apple is working on dual processor G5 xServes. Since Apple is 1U. In a 7U form factor Apple can get 14 processors.
But IBM can get double or 28.
There must be some other differences. :confused:

[G5orbust]

Anyone notice that IBM crippled the main feature of the Apple G5:

8 GB of Dual Channel DDR400

And I quote:

"The JS20 blade blades contain four DIMM sockets. A maximum of 4 GB of system memory is supported by adding a 1GB PC2700 CL2.5 ECC DDR SDRAM DIMM in each of the 4 DIMM sockets. All supported system memory is addressable through direct memory access. The JS20 blade supports currently available 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB DIMM base system memory and options. Supported DIMMs can coexist in the same server; however, memory DIMMs of the same capacity must be installed 3 in matched pairs."

[matthew24]

I have always wondered if IBM would allow Apple to use PowerPC 'without' restrictions (or without a counter offering). IBM and Apple are still competitors but they share the same enemy....

[sethypoo]

This sounds like fun.
I have to admit, I've never heard of Blade Servers, but now I have, so once again Mac Rumors has enlightened me.

Maybe G5 Xserves at MacWorld San Francisco? It's at least probable.

Remember, historically, the current model Xserve is ready for an update. :D

[From Win to Mac]

that it's the 1.6 that's used in the Blades. It's probably for price... but it could be because the faster chips radiate too much heat....

[junior]

Originally posted by G5orbust
Anyone notice that IBM crippled the main feature of the Apple G5:

8 GB of Dual Channel DDR400

And I quote:

"The JS20 blade blades contain four DIMM sockets. A maximum of 4 GB of system memory is supported by adding a 1GB PC2700 CL2.5 ECC DDR SDRAM DIMM in each of the 4 DIMM sockets. All supported system memory is addressable through direct memory access. The JS20 blade supports currently available 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB DIMM base system memory and options. Supported DIMMs can coexist in the same server; however, memory DIMMs of the same capacity must be installed 3 in matched pairs."



Actually, the 1.6ghz G5 also doesn't have 8gb RAM, so it's not crippled. I think the G5 spec is also 4gb.

[G5orbust]

Originally posted by junior
Actually, the 1.6ghz G5 also doesn't have 8gb RAM, so it's not crippled. I think the G5 spec is also 4gb.

Touché.

You are exactly correct. DDR333, 4GB max...its all there. But, I believe that the 1.6 still could have 400MHz dual channel, but it was just chosen not to be. The architechture and bus sure support it, but i guess IBM and Apple have different plans for the chip.

[usingmac]

If I were Steve Jobs......and I didn't know IBM was releasing this machine....they are a competitor. This just gave Apple a reason to port OSX to Intel.

Or Apple knows and IBM ordering is going to allow the option of OS Server on it...which would be sweet for Apple and fair.

Or OSX will be shipping with the machine.

The posts I read did not seem to lock the OS version of Linux...I also read AIX.....which is it??

This will either start a war with IBM and Apple or a lovely marriage will get better.

Either way, I see Apple being highly competitive.......and well positioned....(Hello AMD, can we buy some chips from you)

This just leaves everything way up in the air right now....Either everyone is pissed or everyone is very happy.....

[Tulse]

At some point Apple and IBM are going to be competing for the same server market, as Apple pushes into academia and enterprise. I wonder how happy Big Blue will be, or whether there aren't already some sort of contractual limitations on future Apple server hardware that IBM demanded in exchange for pulling Job's cojones out of the fire with the 970.

[dongmin]

Originally posted by Tulse
At some point Apple and IBM are going to be competing for the same server market, as Apple pushes into academia and enterprise. I wonder how happy Big Blue will be, or whether there aren't already some sort of contractual limitations on future Apple server hardware that IBM demanded in exchange for pulling Job's cojones out of the fire with the 970. By offering Linux as opposed to OS X, the IBM servers will appeal to a different market than Apple. Apple's advantage and distinction in the server field has been the OS. It's Apple who should be more concerned. It's a win-win situation for IBM (yes I realize the payoff is greater for IBM branded servers).

[Rocketman]

Originally posted by dongmin
By offering Linux as opposed to OS X, the IBM servers will appeal to a different market than Apple. Apple's advantage and distinction in the server field has been the OS. It's Apple who should be more concerned. It's a win-win situation for IBM (yes I realize the payoff is greater for IBM branded servers).

Correct me if I am wrong but Linux eliminates Altivec from the scene?

The 7U IBM system does have double the "processor density" as the G4 Xserve, it also has not much more than 1.1 times the throughput as 7U of dual 2Ghz G5 Xserves would have with 1ghz bus and 8gb of DDR 400 RAM and full Altivec implementation would have.

If you look at the supercomputer list that Apple is #3 on right now the power to price and power density of alot of those systems is unimpressive. They are just alot of money thrown at the problem to get bigger compute power with "crippled" OS's and processors and form factors. Example IBM 2x1.6Ghz G5 blade $2700 (available 3-31-04) Apple 2x2Ghz G5 (faster bus and memory) $2999 (Available 10-1-03).

If Apple were to make a "blade server" which is widely rumored to be what it's 3U box is, it might just rock exceptionally hard. (2x2Ghz per blade) $2999 (available 2-1-04 assumed), 7 blades per 3U box. This is not an announced product and what if it is released at 2.5 Ghz or something?

Furthermore IBM will be shipping their 970 stuff in late 1Q 2004 (ie 3-31-04 and Apple had a 970 supercomputer installed and running on Oct 1, 2003 (a 6month dfference).

So Apple is 6 months faster on time to market than "Big Blue".

Rocketman

[Sun Baked]

Originally posted by Rocketman
...If you look at the supercomputer list that Apple is #3 on right now the power to price and power density of alot of those systems is unimpressive. They are just alot of money thrown at the problem to get bigger compute power with "crippled" OS's and processors and form factors. Example IBM 2x1.6Ghz G5 blade $2700 (available 3-31-04) Apple 2x2Ghz G5 (faster bus and memory) $2999 (Available 10-1-03)... The blade has a higher unit density for racks than the PowerMacs, you can stuff in a lot more blade enclosures in the same space as a rack of PowerMacs.

Sure the CPUs aren't clocked as high as the PowerMac, but there is always premium on rack space, cooling capacity, available primary/back-up power supply, network bandwidth. And the upgrade of processing power in a rack may means a lot of dollars in non-computing power upgrades.

[vannote]

Originally posted by Rocketman
Correct me if I am wrong but Linux eliminates Altivec from the scene?


I am correcting you, :D No, It does not eliminate it from the scene.

Actually, Motorola has already been releasing Altivec optimized code for Linux. I don't see why IBM would be any different, especially when it comes to their own hardware.

Regards

[jouster]

Originally posted by usingmac
If I were Steve Jobs......and I didn't know IBM was releasing this machine....

Sorry, run that by me again: Jobs couldn't guess that IBM might base a machine on a processor they themselves designed and currently manufacture?

Not to mention the numerous times they have said they will produce such a server.....:rolleyes:

[singletrack]

The hardware is largely irrelevant.

IBM are selling the Blades to people who want IBM service, DB2, Websphere and whatever IBM products they need for their business.

In that respect IBM are really competing with themselves and the 970 Blades have to offer compelling reasons over x86 Blades which I'm sure they do.

Apple have a completely different package for the enterprise and nowhere near the service level.

At some point IBM and Apple may come up across each other but it's too early for that now. That'll change as Apple expands it's Enterprise level services and attracts more enterprise level apps like Oracle but I doubt you'll see OSX Server on an IBM Blade until you see IBM porting it's applications to OSX. And Jobs allows licensing to 3rd Parties. The current OSX licence does not allow it to be ran on non-Apple hardware.

[tduality]

Originally posted by singletrack
The hardware is largely irrelevant.

IBM are selling the Blades to people who want IBM service, DB2, Websphere and whatever IBM products they need for their business.

In that respect IBM are really competing with themselves and the 970 Blades have to offer compelling reasons over x86 Blades which I'm sure they do.

Apple have a completely different package for the enterprise and nowhere near the service level.

At some point IBM and Apple may come up across each other but it's too early for that now. That'll change as Apple expands it's Enterprise level services and attracts more enterprise level apps like Oracle but I doubt you'll see OSX Server on an IBM Blade until you see IBM porting it's applications to OSX. And Jobs allows licensing to 3rd Parties. The current OSX licence does not allow it to be ran on non-Apple hardware.

Agreed. I guess quite a few of major companies are simply IBM shops. They will only buy hardware and software from IBM due to the Service Level Agreements which can be bought with it. Apple will never be able to compete with IBM in this market. I certainly can see Apple to be successful in research/university markets with the Xserve. And not to forget small and medium sized enterprises who want a reliable server environment with simple administration/configuration management.

[Henriok]

Originally posted by G5orbust Anyone notice that IBM crippled the main feature of the Apple G5:

8 GB of Dual Channel DDR400

And I quote:

"The JS20 blade blades contain four DIMM sockets. A maximum of 4 GB of system memory is supported by adding a 1GB PC2700 CL2.5 ECC DDR SDRAM DIMM in each of the 4 DIMM sockets. I can't see what the problem is. IBM has a different memory controller than Apple have, so why should they have the same characteristics? There are not lot of room in a blade module, so 8 RAM sockets would probably take too much space, and generate too much heat. The system controller in the blade modules might have the same feature that the one in the Power Mac have, and that is that they do support 2 GB modules when they are available. to a total of 8 GB in the blade and 16 GB in the Power Mac G5.

[GregA]

Originally posted by matthew24
I have always wondered if IBM would allow Apple to use PowerPC 'without' restrictions (or without a counter offering). IBM and Apple are still competitors but they share the same enemy.... IBM has been VERY good for the last 8 years or so. Before then, they wanted to have IBM everywhere - IBM hardware with IBM software, and so on (as much as they could force it to be anyway).

Then each IBM division was told to act independently. Make their product to work with competitors if they had a better system. IBM divisions improved as they didn't prop each other up. IBM still acts that way largely, but also can sell "the entire solution" for people who just want IBM.

I hoped Apple would go that way once!

[AidenShaw]

Originally posted by G5orbust
Anyone notice that IBM crippled the main feature of the Apple G5:

8 GB of Dual Channel DDR400

And I quote:

"The JS20 blade blades contain four DIMM sockets. A maximum of 4 GB of system memory ...

You can put 8 GiB of RAM in an IBM HS20 dual Xeon blade...:

• Up to two Intel® XeonTM processors at up to 3.2GHz with 533MHz front-side bus speed, one standard
• 512MB standard/8GB max PC2100 ECC DDR ChipkillTM SDRAM (http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?categoryId=2575417&storeId=1&catalogId=-840&langId=-1)

I'd guess it's no so much "crippled" as that problem that there's only enough room in a 1/2 U blade for 4 DIMM slots, and 2 GiB (or larger) DDR400 DIMMs aren't readily available yet.

You'll see 2 GiB DIMMs, and 8 GiB JS20 blade, I'll bet. (But of course, those 2 GiB DIMMs will let you put 16 GiB of RAM in a G5! ;) )

[allpar]

Quoted: Apple will release Xserve G5 when is passes quality control (can't be too long now).

My question: Apple has quality control? When did THAT happen? I thought Steve had jettisoned it when he took over.

(Funny for a guy who's supposed to be a perfectionist to release the original iBook with that horrible video-out port, OS X with, well, you know, not to mention the latest rash of hardware failures.)

Hate to say it, but Apple's current quality control is making Microsoft look almost average.

[Powerbook G5]

Apple cannot be held completely responsible for hardware issues due to other manufacturers who actually make the parts they use. They can't open every box and play with each computer to make sure they are perfect before shipping them to your door.

[Tim Flynn]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
Apple cannot be held completely responsible for hardware issues due to other manufacturers who actually make the parts they use. They can't open every box and play with each computer to make sure they are perfect before shipping them to your door.

Apple is completely responsible to the purchaser, because Apple is the "manufacturer". On the same token the sub contractor that apple uses to assemble is responsible to Apple. Quality control maybe lacking. But it is still possible that "lemon" get past QC.

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
Apple cannot be held completely responsible for hardware issues due to other manufacturers who actually make the parts they use. They can't open every box and play with each computer to make sure they are perfect before shipping them to your door. Funny, that's what I thought the high (often 50%) premium over the equiv. Dell hardware was supposed to be getting us, from the message-board proclaimed "BMW of computer manufacturers." This is the whole point of going to a system manufacturer, rather than trying to build your own box out of parts, that they do take responsibility (at a price) for the completeness and quality of the finished product, including all subassemblies.

-Richard

[Powerbook G5]

If Apple made the LCD screens, HDs, RAM, processors, etc, I would agree, but how is Apple to know that the plant that is making the LCDs let out a batch of defective screens? As I said earlier, Steve doesn't sit down at the warehouse and go through every computer that is ordered to see if it is working perfectly and that is about the only way to truly be "100% quality control".

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by Rocketman
If you look at the supercomputer list that Apple is #3 on right now the power to price and power density of alot of those systems is unimpressive. They are just alot of money thrown at the problem to get bigger compute power with "crippled" OS's and processors and form factors. Example IBM 2x1.6Ghz G5 blade $2700 (available 3-31-04) Apple 2x2Ghz G5 (faster bus and memory) $2999 (Available 10-1-03).First, you forgot the extra price for the case for the blades, which would drive that cost up more. Then again, you forgot the higher QA levels, higher reliability levels, massive cooling and power service systems, etc, that are part and parcel of a blade system. There's a reason that anyone with MPP needs likes blades. How much room did it take to store that "#3 supercomputer"? How much bizarreness in the cooling system?If Apple were to make a "blade server" which is widely rumored to be what it's 3U box is, it might just rock exceptionally hard. (2x2Ghz per blade) $2999 (available 2-1-04 assumed), 7 blades per 3U box. This is not an announced product and what if it is released at 2.5 Ghz or something?Er, WTF? I've never seen anyone fit 7 blades into a 3U box. A 3U box is approximately 5" tall. That would involve tossing a dual G5 into a box about 5" tall by 3.5" wide -- a pretty unusual form-factor. I would be very surprised if Apple did anything other than the traditional self-contained servers, at least for a while. Especially considering how long its taking them to get the basic 1U Xserve out the door... Besides, they'd have to reinvent so much to do this, instead of just leveraging existing standards like IBM did ("Install these blades in a new BladeCenter or upgrade an existing BladeCenter installation.")Furthermore IBM will be shipping their 970 stuff in late 1Q 2004 (ie 3-31-04 and Apple had a 970 supercomputer installed and running on Oct 1, 2003 (a 6month dfference).

So Apple is 6 months faster on time to market than "Big Blue".First, its likely that Apple had priority on the early shipments of the 970. Would you have preferred even slower shipments of G5 systems? Secondly, what part of "comprehensive high-availability and systems-management features" did you not catch? These systems are much more engineered than the Apple boxen. Apple didn't beat IBM to market in this case, because they have completely different markets, different requirements, and different products.

-Richard

[Tim Flynn]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
If Apple made the LCD screens, HDs, RAM, processors, etc, I would agree, but how is Apple to know that the plant that is making the LCDs let out a batch of defective screens? As I said earlier, Steve doesn't sit down at the warehouse and go through every computer that is ordered to see if it is working perfectly and that is about the only way to truly be "100% quality control".

Apple is 100% responsible. That's why they have a warranty.
Now Apple buys a lot of LCD panels from company X, knowing that they are responsible for the end product, they get company X the assure Apple that they have adequate QC for product coming out of the plant. If they don't there are other manufactures.
The panels from company X arrive at final assembler company Y. Company Y takes the panel and other parts to make the final product say a 20 " cinema display. The final assembly goes through another quality check procedure before final a packaging and out the door.
Apple is responsible during the warranty period ( and sometimes after).

P.S. I not trying to be hard. I enjoy your many posts .

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by rjstanford
Er, WTF? I've never seen anyone fit 7 blades into a 3U box. A 3U box is approximately 5" tall. That would involve tossing a dual G5 into a box about 5" tall by 3.5" wide -- a pretty unusual form-factor. I would be very surprised if Apple did anything other than the traditional self-contained servers, at least for a while. Especially considering how long its taking them to get the basic 1U Xserve out the door... Besides, they'd have to reinvent so much to do this, instead of just leveraging existing standards like IBM did ("Install these blades in a new BladeCenter or upgrade an existing BladeCenter installation.") -Richard

Just out of curiosity, how important is having a hard drive to a server you would use as part of a cluster??? IBM fits 7 blades in a 5U enclosure, but those blades have room for 2 40gig harddrives in each one. Would removing them shrink the blades enough to fit in 3U?

This would also cut the cost of the drive and associated support chips. Does anyone know how this would effect its usefulness as a cluster?

Thinking outloud, but apple already designs a unique chassis for cluster applications...

[AidenShaw]

The PPC970 blades need two 1800 watt power supplies (4 for redundant power)....

The dual 2.4 GHz Xeon blades need two 1200 watt 220v power supplies (4 for redundancy).

Is the "wattage myth" going to be the next one to collapse?

[Tim Flynn]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
Just out of curiosity, how important is having a hard drive to a server you would use as part of a cluster??? IBM fits 7 blades in a 5U enclosure, but those blades have room for 2 40gig harddrives in each one. Would removing them shrink the blades enough to fit in 3U?

This would also cut the cost of the drive and associated support chips. Does anyone know how this would effect its usefulness as a cluster?


Where does the swap drive/partition go ?

[Powerbook G5]

Originally posted by Tim Flynn
Apple is 100% responsible. That's why they have a warranty.
Now Apple buys a lot of LCD panels from company X, knowing that they are responsible for the end product, they get company X the assure Apple that they have adequate QC for product coming out of the plant. If they don't there are other manufactures.
The panels from company X arrive at final assembler company Y. Company Y takes the panel and other parts to make the final product say a 20 " cinema display. The final assembly goes through another quality check procedure before final a packaging and out the door.
Apple is responsible during the warranty period ( and sometimes after).

P.S. I not trying to be hard. I enjoy your many posts .

That's fine, it's just that if the LCD on my PowerBook were to develop spots, I'd be more upset with whatever company that made them and not at Apple. Even if they did an inspection of their QC, that company ended up letting Apple down, and these spots apparently appear after weeks of use, so I don't see Apple being the one who was in the wrong. If Apple were to say "Too bad, we don't want to pay to fix it for you for free" then I would me mad, but they seem pretty open about taking them back and either replacing or repairing them, so they are doing whatever they can to deliver good PowerBooks to us along with any other faulty hardware that has come up.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Tim Flynn
Where does the swap drive/partition go ?

A swap drive only comes into play when you are trying to use more memory than you physically have. Since all uses of clusters are for custom designed applications, it doesn't seem to me as though it would be a huge problem to just stay within the limits of the memory you have. Of course as a fail-safe you could use some sort of attached storage over the network, like an xRaid. Granted this would be a huge performance hit, but if you were only using it as a fail-safe, logging it and then fixing the app so it doesn't do that any more...

I don't know. I'm just guessing about a lot of this. Does anyone have any actual knowledge about clusters???

[udannlin]

im guessing running panther on these is out of the question?

[tychay]

Originally posted by idea_hamster
I noticed that they make a point of noting that every one of these has a 48x CD drive and a -- you guessed it! -- 1.44MB floppy drive! "The floppy is dead! Long live the floppy!" Now, I can imagine that a floppy might be useful ... but I can't figure out how ...:confused:

Umm no. Every BladeCenter (http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/bladecenter/) chasis has a floppy and CD Drive, not every blade. You push a button on the blade and that blade now becomes is the one the floppy/CD/keyboard/video/mouse/etc points to.

Each chassis holds up to 14 blades in a 7U (1U = 1.5inches vertical height for rack mounting). The back has removable parts so you can have redundant power supplies, gigabit switches, and fiberchannel. The front-to-back channelled airflow design (as I've mentioned before) probably influenced a certain aluminum tower from your favorite fruity computer company.

It also makes an X-Serve sound whisper quiet. ;)

I should know we have one at work (just with P4 Xeons (http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?categoryId=2575417&storeId=1&catalogId=-840&langId=-1), not with the 970 in them).

A floppy is useful in Linux installations (the main OS dropped onto these will be Red Hat Linux ES or SUSE Linux) for a boot disk. Boot disks can be useful for recovery and also can provide a minimum level of physical security. Also, it might be useful for a security admin to keep their GPG key on there.

Originally posted by usingmac
If I were Steve Jobs......and I didn't know IBM was releasing this machine....they are a competitor. This just gave Apple a reason to port OSX to Intel.

It's posts like these that make me understand why people roll their eyes when I say I've owned Macs for 18 years.

This is nothing new, IBM has demo/talked this for over a year with a plan to release in Q1 2004 (as I've said many times on this forum). IBM's plan has always been to make the blades interchangeable with each other (P4, 970, Opterons, Itanium?).

In fact, the reason for developing the 970 was to make things like this, etc, not for Apple. Apple was lucky to have IBM and have some influence in the design (Altivec/VMX/Velocity) and IBM has a 3rd party to show what this chip can do on the desktop (and in the supercomputer world, ironically).

Until a year and a half ago, Apple didn't have any offering in the enterprise/data center.

Originally posted by Tulse
I wonder how happy Big Blue will be, or whether there aren't already some sort of contractual limitations on future Apple server hardware that IBM demanded in exchange for pulling Job's cojones out of the fire with the 970.

As a sign of how strong the partnership is, look no further than the fact that these are 2x1.6Ghz units coming out when Apple will probably have a 2x2.5Ghz. Seems like they're giving their "competitor" their best parts as well as a 6 month exclusivity!

Competition? IBM has been competing with it's partners for the last two decades! They had OS/2 for a long time while they continued to sell and support Windows. On their low end unix servers you two flavors of Linux as well as their own AIX and Windows (they maintain something like 6 different operating systems and support nearly every other one). They license patents and technology to their competitors in the hard drive space (until Hitatchi bought the division) and the microchip space ("flip chip", copper interconnects, etc. are all IBM inventions), How do you think AMD Athlons were the first chips to break 1Ghz (Answer: IBM's copper interconnect technology was given by Motorola to AMD while Intel had miscalculated and didn't realize that aluminum would hit a nearly unbreakable barrier at those frequencies)... The list goes on and on.

Originally posted by Rocketman
Correct me if I am wrong but Linux eliminates Altivec from the scene?
Correction. You're wrong. Altivec optimizations can be done on Linux but unlike IIC on x86 (Intel's compiler which is rarely used by most but essential for IA64), the optimizations aren't done automatically.

However, IBM has a much stronger compiler division than Intel and there are plans by them to put such things into XL C (IBM's compiler) and possibly into gcc (Apple uses a patched version of this) if the gcc team will take them (GCC is based on portability, not speed).

BTW, the only reason Apple is #3 on the list and not IBM is because the IBM servers wouldn't be ready until Q1 2004. The machines Virginia Tech would have liked to buy would have been 1U 2x2Ghz 970 rackmounts with PCI-X (or blades if the bladecenter could house a switch for Infiniband). Check the talk, if you don't believe me--it was their first choice.

Originally posted by G5orbust
Anyone notice that IBM crippled the main feature of the Apple G5

The thing to realize is that power and space are premium on a blade. This means that depending on the vendor, some parts are switched out with notebook parts (Transmeta CPU in RLX, notebook hard drives...). In some extreme cases, they just use crappy parts and rips you off instead (Dell (http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_1655mc?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz) leaps to mind).

Having said that, I don't understand why they couldn't have put 8GB Chipkill (like ECC on steroids) RAM maximum on these things.

Originally posted by wrylachlan
Just out of curiosity, how important is having a hard drive to a server you would use as part of a cluster??? IBM fits 7 blades in a 5U enclosure, but those blades have room for 2 40gig harddrives in each one. Would removing them shrink the blades enough to fit in 3U?
We use the hard drive for the operating system and to run the software. The database and other essentials is offloaded via fiberchannel to a drive array. At least one hard drive is important, a second isn't needed since another blade can pick up the slack if one fails.

It won't shrink the blades at all. These things are very "deep" the depth can be shrunk, but that just leaves more room in the back--that depth is already fixed by the chasis design which I believe IBM and Intel is pushing as a standard.

IIRC, the drives are IBM/Hitachi 2.5" (notebook) drives anyway and are mounted directly on the blade, not those big 3.5" with hot swap mountings you see on the X-Serve.

Instead, the idea is any part on the blade fails, you simply pull out the whole blade (system failovers take care of the loss) and replace it.

But the nice thing about BladeCenters is it's expandability and flexibility.

Take care,

terry

[arn]

Originally posted by tychay

Take care,

terry

Thanks for the informative post, terry.

arn

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by tychay
We use the hard drive for the operating system and to run the software. The database and other essentials is offloaded via fiberchannel to a drive array. At least one hard drive is important, a second isn't needed since another blade can pick up the slack if one fails.

It won't shrink the blades at all. These things are very "deep" the depth can be shrunk, but that just leaves more room in the back--that depth is already fixed by the chasis design which I believe IBM and Intel is pushing as a standard.

IIRC, the drives are IBM/Hitachi 2.5" (notebook) drives anyway and are mounted directly on the blade, not those big 3.5" with hot swap mountings you see on the X-Serve.

Take care,

terry

I can't comment on the 5U form factor being a standard, the reason I was asking had more to do with rumors of a 3U apple device and the possibility of it being a blade server. That being said, since Apple has no desire whatsoever to produce x86 compatable hardware, I'm not sure why they would have to conform to a standard that IBM and Intel are setting. Is there enough of an economy of scale in the blade server market that conforming to the 5U standard could save Apple money?

As for the OS residing on the harddrive - netboot makes this unnecessary. And the software running off the harddrive - my understanding is that clusters are used in really difficult problems which take a long time to compute... in which case the ratio of time spent loading the executable from network attached storage, to actual processing time is negligable. I mean if a cluster is churning away on a simulation of a nuclear explosion for a day or so, then the difference between loading the program off a local harddrive versus loading it off an attached xRaid is insignificant.

I would think that the coding necessary to work around the lack of a swap drive would be more problematic than the issues you brought up.

And as for the depth versus height thing, if you start out with the premise of 3U and design the board from the ground up around that, then obviously it doesn't matter where in a 5U blade the HD is, just the difference in overall space. To phrase it another way - if you remove the HD and associated chipset from a 5U blade would the total volume of the blade be small enough that if you layed it out different it could fit in 3U?

Why would this be an advantage, you ask? Well if apple wanted to build on the success of the VA cluster and really corner that market... I mean they already make a unit specifically for clustering...

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
I can't comment on the 5U form factor being a standard, the reason I was asking had more to do with rumors of a 3U apple device and the possibility of it being a blade server. That being said, since Apple has no desire whatsoever to produce x86 compatable hardware, I'm not sure why they would have to conform to a standard that IBM and Intel are setting. Is there enough of an economy of scale in the blade server market that conforming to the 5U standard could save Apple money?Er, yes - in a pretty big way. One thing to keep in mind is that these devices are only really of interest to the enterprise market - and the higher end of that market, to be honest (most people that I work with are happier with fewer, larger high SMP machines (32-64 way) for example).

What does that mean? Basically, that there's been massive amounts of design work that go into making these enclosures bulletproof. Remember, the blade is designed to fail gracefully (and for that to be very, very rare), but if you case goes out you've just lost a large number of systems. There is no point whatsoever in spending tons of money trying to redesign something that, quite frankly, doesn't need to be redesigned.

Besides, with a standard case, I can mix and match 970s, Xeons, Itaniums, whatever I need. Why would I move to a proprietary case? Its the same argument that you could make against Apple releasing to a 15" rack width instead of the standard 19" (but more so). Yeah, they could, and it would take up less spaces, but it would cost them more money and nobody would ever significantly buy them.

Out of curiosity, what have you heard about this 3U device?

-Richard

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by rjstanford
Er, yes - in a pretty big way. One thing to keep in mind is that these devices are only really of interest to the enterprise market - and the higher end of that market, to be honest (most people that I work with are happier with fewer, larger high SMP machines (32-64 way) for example).

What does that mean? Basically, that there's been massive amounts of design work that go into making these enclosures bulletproof. Remember, the blade is designed to fail gracefully (and for that to be very, very rare), but if you case goes out you've just lost a large number of systems. There is no point whatsoever in spending tons of money trying to redesign something that, quite frankly, doesn't need to be redesigned.

Besides, with a standard case, I can mix and match 970s, Xeons, Itaniums, whatever I need. Why would I move to a proprietary case? Its the same argument that you could make against Apple releasing to a 15" rack width instead of the standard 19" (but more so). Yeah, they could, and it would take up less spaces, but it would cost them more money and nobody would ever significantly buy them.

Out of curiosity, what have you heard about this 3U device?

-Richard

OK, maybe I'm not making myself clear. I'm not talking about an IBM blade, I'm talking about a potential Apple blade which was hinted at in the 3U rumor a while back (maybe it was page 2) .If Apple were to make a blade server, which is the point I was asking about, they would have to design it themselves from scratch, since they don't currently offer a blade. So I'm not sure what your argument about redesigning something which already works has to do with it. Are you saying that IBM and Intel are making a 5U standard such that an IBM blade could work in a say Dell enclosure??? Even so, why would Apple, which is all about integration, design a blade to go in an IBM enclosure? What is the benefit of standardization to someone entering the market?

My question about an economy of scale was asking "Are the parts used in the blades or enclosure less expensive if you go with 5U because there are enough 5U blades out there to make an economy of scale on the various components?" If so, then I could see the cost benefit of going 5U, but my take on the amount of blades shipped is that it isn't that many...

I'm sorry if I'm belaboring the point, but I feel as though you are very knowledgably answering questions that are slightly tangential to what I'm asking. Let me ask it this way - "With the knowledge you have of blades, if you were in charge of designing an Apple blade specifically for the Apple market, what decisions would you make and why?"

[allpar]

Personally, I think the ideal would be to have IBM selling OS X compatible blades and offering OS X as an option... with enterprises, actual funcdtionality is not nearly as important as the name of the company selling the product. IBM is a NAME. Apple is a detriment. It's like cars - if you put the Toyota or Honda label on, people will buy it; even the Ford blue oval will put a car into high sales. The Chrysler label means you have to add $4,000 in incentives to an already-lower price to get sales. (And before anyone takes offense...I bought a Toyota...and a Chrysler. But to the average customer, Chrysler is somewhere below Hyundai, and to the average enterprise customer, Apple is somewhere below Packard Bell.)

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
What is the benefit of standardization to someone entering the market?Just that they could build the blade itself without having to design, manufacture, warehouse, ship and support all of the supporting hardware, such as the case. Its the same reason that Sony makes a car stereo, but doesn't make a car to put it in (although not quite to that extent).Let me ask it this way - "With the knowledge you have of blades, if you were in charge of designing an Apple blade specifically for the Apple market, what decisions would you make and why?" The blade market is pretty small - you're generally going after people who have massively parallel needs. These folk are not going to be easy to convince to switch to unproven hardware in the first place. I would say that Apple needs 2-3 more years in the Server marketplace before really adressing this market. So far, they've been unable to produce a decent server at a reasonable price with any kind of product roadmap (the current Xserve is, quite frankly, a bit of a joke).

If Apple proves that they've got what it takes to play in the server market, and has the solid uptime quality to back it up, people may start wanting denser solutions from them. But that's probably going to appeal to those people wanting over 40 CPUs - until that point, we're only talking a single rack (including power, monitor, switch, et cetera) which isn't that big a deal. Below this point, there's no reason to pay the premium for a blade type solution.

Finally, if I buy a standard solution from a vendor such as IBM, I don't have lock-in issues. I can drop in systems with 970s, Itaniums, Xeons ... whatever. Enterprise shops, while they tend to be loyal, also tend to value flexibility. Apple would really have to have a compelling solution from a pricing standpoint (without reducing the quality and SLAs available from IBM, et al) to gain significantly here.

Quite frankly, the best thing that Apple could do to gain headway in the enterprise would be to release a product roadmap. Show me guaranteed support times and desupport dates for the current hardware and software, and show me a couple of years worth of expected hardware product development, and I'll really get interested. Add some real hardware support, with decent SLAs, and I'm getting excited.

Right now, for example, if we had gone with Xserves and wanted to stay with the platform we'd be paying $5,500 for a dual 1.3ghz G4 box. That's just plain uncompetitive. To put it into perspective, I can source a dual 3ghz Xeon from Dell with redundant power supplies (not even an option on the Xserve) for $4,200 if drop the support down a couple of levels to match AppleCare's crappy coverage ("The hardware repair coverage provides onsite response within four hours during business hours, and next-day onsite response when you contact AppleCare after business hours"). That's 20% less cost for, conservatively, double the performance. IBMs prices are a little higher, but come with better SLAs and a more proven history (and still give better value than Apples server). IBM also has a really great channel sales whereas I haven't seen anything from Apple encouraging vertical resellers.

Until they address some of these issues, Apple will continue to be a marginal player in the enterprise field. And, not including a few universities, those are the customers most interested in high-powered space-dense solutions like blade servers.

-Richard

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by allpar
Personally, I think the ideal would be to have IBM selling OS X compatible blades and offering OS X as an option... with enterprises, actual funcdtionality is not nearly as important as the name of the company selling the product. IBM is a NAME. Apple is a detriment.Forget the name, look at the track record. IBM has a great system with some really good people behind it. I can pick up the phone and get answers about future products, system tuning assistance, whatever support I need. No worries whatsoever. With Apple, when I look at their history, I see that they released the Xserve back in mid 2002, have provided a 30% speed increase over the past 15 months, and have absolutely no information about when, if ever, they'll update it (or even if they'll bother to keep producing it). This, quite frankly, is why IBM is so much more appealing to people having to spend six or seven figures on business-critical systems.

-Richard

[tychay]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
Are you saying that IBM and Intel are making a 5U standard such that an IBM blade could work in a say Dell enclosure?

Note, the above post wasn't a reply to mine but you quoted mine earlier and I think I should clear up some ongoing misconceptions.

First, I never claimed that Apple would use IBMs enclosure. I just claimed that IBM's 970 J20 has been expected for a while now and, in fact, it's later (http://rss.com.com/2100-1010_3-5107833.html) than expected.

I agree it is possible that Apple's 3U server is a blade center. Look at Dell's 6x2P3's in 3U configuration (http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_1655mc?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz). Honestly is this the sort of configuration you're looking forward to? More likely is the Sun blades (http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/blade/index.html). (We considered purchasing this at the time it was still under development.)

But this sort of leaves you wondering: secrecy may be all well and good among consumers, but enterprise customers like to see a road map. You are talking people committing their company on a product for the next 3-10 years. If Apple has a 3U offering in the offing, they should inform people about it as well as other enterprise class plans. But, I guess Apple only gives such things to Pixar. ;)

No, the IBM enclosure (http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/bladecenter/) is not 5U, it's 7U. It houses 14 blades and associated cabling (networking, KVM, and the like). We have one at work for the last half year or so. The design is excellent.

Yes, IBM and Intel (http://rss.com.com/2100-1001-958152.html?tag=nl) have partnered up to standardize the design. That is exactly what I've been saying. In fact, the blade Intel sells is just a rebadged IBM one (http://rss.com.com/2100-1010_3-5079583.html?tag=st_rn).

No, IBM blades do not work in a Dell enclosure. Because of the R&D involved, Dell can't cost-compete with IBM/Intel or anyone else for this matter so they are pushing their own standard (http://rss.com.com/2100-1010_3-5072603.html?tag=st_rn) based on PC-quality parts instead of PC-standard ones. What Dell has been doing for the last year is selling a three year old personal computer in a blade configuration and charging you blade prices. The supply chain advantages don't count for squat right now in the bladecenter market.

They will someday, that's why IBM and Intel have allied. IBM figures the key will be software and services to manage the blade (and the flexibility to use different architectures in the same blade center) which goes well with their business initiatives. And Intel figures commoditization of the blade market will sell more CPUs and more importantly get Itanium's foot finally in the Pentium door.

I don't know what your obsession is with removing the hard drive. There is no blade on the market that comes without it and they all use notebook hard drives which are quite small. Even the "Big Mac" cluster in Virginia finds the local ATA drives of their G5 compute nodes useful, and, if anything, when possible a big locally accessible drive for certain things is preferable to a centrally stored NAS or Fiber Channel.

There is no way Apple has a chance of "cornering the market" as long as IBM or Intel produce the processor being used. The big purchaser of blades are for rendering and then the per-computer OS license is paramount (hence the prevalence of Linux). They can, however be a decent niche player. Some SME's like us like the blade configuration because it has a low cost entry point but room to grow and a flexibility to avoid vendor or platform or OS lock in. If Apple introduces their own non-compatible platform though, they won't be considered by others like us.

Don't count out the possibility of Apple licensing their OS to IBM though. IBM is a company that has rebadged many a thing (anyone remember Palm V's badged as IBM) and they sell and support competitor's products willingly... (that "elephants can dance" thing).

[ktlx]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
I'm sorry if I'm belaboring the point, but I feel as though you are very knowledgably answering questions that are slightly tangential to what I'm asking. Let me ask it this way - "With the knowledge you have of blades, if you were in charge of designing an Apple blade specifically for the Apple market, what decisions would you make and why?"

If I were Apple, I would not spend R&D dollars on a blade server design at this time. Apple does not have the credibility in the enterprise hardware market and Mac OS X Server currently does not solve any problems that Linux, Solaris and AIX do not.

If I were Apple, I would focus on building great dual and quad processor systems and innovative storage systems. The vast majority of the server market is dual and quad processor systems and Apple can use them to build its brand name. In addition, the R&D dollars can be used to bring out dual and quad processor workstations using many common parts. They could even be the same products only in veritcal oriented cases instead of horizontal rack mount ones.

I would create two server, three storage products and improve the software offerings.

One server would be a 1U dual processor system using PowerPC 970 processors as soon as possible. The second server would be a 3U quad processor system using PowerPC 970 processors, also as soon as possible.

One storage product would be a 1U RAID array with Serial ATA drives and a fibre channel interface. The second storage product would be a 3U RAID array with Serial ATA drives and dual fibre channel interfaces. The third storage product would be standard cabinet filled with individual 3U storage arrays and two or four fibre channel interfaces for the whole cabinet.

Finally I would work with companies like HP, IBM and Veritas to get their enterprise management software running under Mac OS X.

Only after I were able to accomplish all of that would I even consider going after the blade market. Mac OS X still would not offer anything above Linux, Solaris and AIX, but at least it would be close to parity so that Apple could use the lure of sexy Mac OS X workstations to tip the balance in their favor.