Experton Group Weekly IT News

Apple’s Chip Acquisition and new Blade Technologies for Web 2.0 Computing

By: Jerald Murphy

Officials from Apple, Inc. recently announced they were buying chip manufacturer P.A. Semi, Inc.  In other news, Blade Network Technologies, Inc. announced its newest RackSwitch, while IBM Corp. unveiled a new line of energy efficient servers.

Focal Points:

• Officials from Apple announced that they had entered into an agreement to buy the chip manufacturer P.A. Semi. This California-based company designs microprocessors that are use for high-end, low-power applications. Apple is reported to have spent $278 million for the acquisition. P.A. Semi uses technology based on the IBM Power architecture. It licenses this technology from IBM to make a very lower power version of the architecture. P.A. Semi's current processor, "PWRficient", is a 64-bit, dual-core chip, with two memory controller and 2MB of L2 cache. While Apple is expected to keep its main computers based on x86 architectures, it is likely to use P.A. Semi's technology for use in future mobile devices.
• Executives from Blade Network Technologies recently announced a new switch designed for use in high-end data centers. Officials said the RackSwitch enables rack-by-rack provisioning, which they claim will lower the total cost of ownership by allowing infrastructure in the data center to be scaled out on a rack-by-rack basis. Blade Technologies used to be a business unit of Nortel Networks, until it was taken private early in 2006. Officials also stated that IBM will be the first OEM partner for the RackSwitch, which has been designed specifically to work with IBM's iDataPlex. Pricing for RackSwitch starts at under $500 per 10 Gigabit Ethernet port, and touts low power utilization and support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet. The RackSwitch systems will be available starting in June 2008.
• Officials from IBM just announced a new set of servers designed specifically for very large scale Web 2.0 computing environments. The new servers, labeled iDataPlex, are designed to scale to tens of thousands of servers, with very high efficiency in mind to help lower the massive power requirements of these goliath data centers. Some of the capabilities of the new servers include doubling the number of systems that can be put in a single rack and consumption of 40 percent less power while increasing computing capabilities by five times. It also supports liquid cooling in the rear of the systems so they can run at room temperatures without any external air conditioning. Officials said the systems were built using standard components and open source software to lower system costs. Because of the large size of these systems, they will be made to order to a client's specific business requirements.

Experton Group believes energy efficiency will be the new key criteria that IT shops and vendors will use to judge the value of next-generation computing platforms

As power and cooling costs rise to almost 50 percent of data center operational costs, reducing energy consumption can have a greater effect on profitability than a faster processor. IT executives should integrate energy efficiency metrics as key components of data center infrastructure designs and systems evaluation.