Wednesday, December 4, 2002
IBM will announce a new low-end server that can run using Linux operating system.
IBM's pSeries machines already are available with Linux but have also required AIX, IBM's version of Unix. IBM has modified the Linux Operating system sufficiently that its p630 servers will start up without AIX.
The p630 is the lowest-end product to use IBM's 64-bit Power4 processor, and Big Blue is positioning the product as a lower-cost Linux alternative to HP's Itanium-based offerings. Itanium, like Power4 and Sun Microsystems' UltraSparc, is a 64-bit processor that can communicate with much larger amounts of memory.
IBM acknowledges there isn't much of a market yet for Linux on the pSeries machines, but it hopes experimental customers such as those needing to perform scientific calculations will gravitate toward the new p630 systems.
A single-processor p630 costs $15,477 with 2GB of memory; adding SuSE's version of Linux tacks on about $1,250. The same system with AIX costs $16,977 but has flexible configuration options the Linux system lacks.
IBM is taking advantage of Linux's ability to run on numerous processors, moving it to all four of its major server lines.
By: DocMemory
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