The tech giant IBM is expected to unveil new Unix servers on July 13. These new servers will be using IBM's Power5 processors. Several sever models will be announced ranging from two, four, and even sixteen processors.
IBM plans to announce its new generation of Unix servers July 13, kicking off the second phase of the debut of its Power5 processors, sources said.
Big Blue is expected to announce models with two, four and 16 processors, sources familiar with the plans said. Later, IBM will sell a top-end 64-processor system, but that model isn't expected this quarter. IBM declined to comment for this report. Big Blue has long run in third place in the fiercely competitive Unix server market, trailing leader Sun Microsystems and second-place Hewlett-Packard. But IBM has been gaining Unix share: In 2003, IBM's revenue grew 13 percent to $4.1 billion, while Sun's shrank 16 percent to $5.4 billion and HP's shrank 4 percent to $5.3 billion, according to research firm Gartner.
IBM is converging two server lines, the pSeries models that run IBM's AIX version of Unix and the iSeries line that runs OS/400 and its successor, i5/OS. The two lines have been growing closer for years, but with the launch of the Power5-based systems, the hardware is identical. Through technology called "partitioning," a single system can run AIX, i5/OS and Linux. Big Blue launched its first Power5-based systems with i5/OS in May, emphasizing the increasing unification in its server group by dropping the iSeries label in favor of eServer i5.
News source: ZDNet
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