Summit hits the shelves

IBM's long-awaited Summit chipset has finally made its way onto the shelves in time for Christmas.

Renamed the Enterprise X-Architecture, it is designed to bring mainframe computing to its eServer product line.

The eServer 360 will offer four-way Xeon MP technology from Intel - previously codenamed Foster - in a three-tier rack design but in a mid-range machine.

Tikiri Wanduragala, senior server consultant for IBM's eServer division, said: "It's a workhorse product - a classic for banking and insurance customers but it offers high-end performance."

He admitted the idea of top-level performance for low prices had been developed with the aim to shift lots of machines.

"There is a business model behind this -we're not putting high end performance in an affordable machine out of altruism. We will sell one of these boxes every three minutes throughout Europe as it costs thousands instead of the millions that the mainframes costs."

The server's modular design enables users to take a brick approach to building data centres.

"There's a debate raging at the moment over whether clustering or SMP is the way to go. Even within IBM there are differences of opinions. The e360 has the interconnection built into the memory controller so that you can add or detract CPU's and build either a cluster or SMP on a daily basis. "It doesn't hardwire the customer down one route."

Additional features include remote input/output offering "pay as you go" bandwidth access and intelligent management tools. Active Memory is available for the first time so users can increase memory requirements without shutting down the machine.