Fujitsu today overhauled its high-end BX630 blade server, offering users eight-way processing in a bid to replace traditional symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) servers.
Fujitsu deploys a small connector kit, essentially a piece of electronic circuitry, to link four two-way BX630 blade servers to create its new multiprocessor offering. The vendor also has equipped the processors with HyperTransport technology. Developed by AMD, HyperTransport is a high-speed, low latency chip-linking technique designed to improve communication speeds between the vendor's dual-core chips. (See HyperTransporters Release Spec, Free White Papers on HyperTransport, and HyperTransport Consortium Intros New Spec.)
According to Richard McCormack, senior vice president of product and solutions marketing at Fujitsu, the eight-way AMD Opteron-based BX630s will meet a growing need for number crunching amongst users.
"The big demand that we get for eight-socket nodes is in the database sector," he tells Byte and Switch. Particularly interested are users running large SQL Server and Oracle applications, he notes.
At least one analyst sees Fujitsu's eight-way capability as a milestone. Joe Clabby, president of analyst firm Clabby Analytics, says that despite a flurry of activity in the blade server space from HP and IBM, eight-way machines are few and far between. "That's a hell of an engineering statement," he says. "Back in the day, if you wanted an eight-way, you would have had to buy a big SMP system."
What skills do network managers really need to properly secure industrial networks? What new protocols, frameworks, and regulations are important? And what conferences and certifications can help? Here are five tips to get started.
A full-stack approach to retail edge offers retailers a way to optimize operations and adapt to changes in a post-pandemic world.
Network management tool sprawl is getting in the way of network management. It’s time for IT to do something about it.
