IBM and Intel cut blade server deal

IBM and Intel are joining forces in a multiyear project to design new super-slim "blade" servers, the companies plan to announce later today.

The companies will meet to decide which models are needed and which company will design each system, said Tim Dougherty, director of blade server strategy at IBM. Both companies will get access to the blade designs that they decide in advance to share. However, each company also is free to design blade systems outside the arrangement that won't be shared.

The first system that will fit into the deal will be IBM's BladeCenter systems, which Dougherty said will be announced by the end of September.

Blade servers are thin models that squeeze side-by-side into a single enclosure like books in a bookshelf. Hewlett Packard is the sole mainstream server maker to sell blade systems, but Dell Computer, IBM and Sun Microsystems each have their own designs.

Blades have been a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy market for servers, the networked computers that run full time to handle jobs such as managing corporate e-mail or customer accounts. But designing blades involves balancing computing power against the risk of overheating, among other challenges.

Where HP's current blades emphasise squeezing lots of low-end Pentium III processors into a small space, many in the industry are shifting their focus to higher-powered machines with dual Xeon processors.

The IBM-Intel arrangement will revolve around these higher-end processors, said Phil Brace, marketing director for Intel's Enterprise Products Group.

"The initial products are focused on Intel Xeon and Xeon MP," Brace said, referring to his company's midrange processors that work in two- and four-processor servers, respectively. "Itanium 2 solutions are on the horizon as well."

It's difficult to squeeze processors into small spaces without overheating the computer, a problem that can cause data corruption and crashes. Putting higher-end processors such as Xeon and Itanium into small cabinets is trickier than cooler chips such as Intel's ultra-low voltage Pentium III chips.

Stephen Shankland writes for News.com