POWER7 and Itanium 9300 : IBM, HP Processors Spotlight Declining Unix Market

POWER7

The unveiling of IBM (NYSE:IBM)’s new POWER7 and Intel (NSDQ:INTC)’s new Itanium 9300 processors on Monday come at a time when demand for traditional Unix servers, which are based on such processors, is gradually declining.

They also come at a time when the third most important Unix processor line, Sun Microsystems (NSDQ:JAVA)’ SPARC, is in a state of flux thanks to the acquisition of Sun by Oracle (NSDQ:ORCL).

Together, these are starting to impact the channel, which is seeing fewer Unix server sales but more consolidation of applications.

IBM on Monday unveiled its POWER7 processors which feature eight cores running up to 32 threads, or congruent computational tasks, per chip.

The POWER7 also includes new memory optimization capabilities, the ability to allocate the on-chip cache to four cores while turning the other four off to cut power consumption, and expanded virtualization scalability.

IBM also introduced a number of new POWER7-based servers.

Intel on Monday unveiled its Itanium 9300 processor, code-named Tukwila, which features four cores running up to eight threads per chip.

read full article: IBM, HP Processors Spotlight Declining Unix Market
crn.com