Ultra-dense server blades

April 17, 2001 —

Editor’s Note: We’d like to apologize for the duplicate newsletters that many of you received last week. The problem was tracked to a technical glitch that we have been told has now been fixed -- so it shouldn’t happen again. Thank you for your patience!

Research firm IDC says that the use of servers based on the CompactPCI specification will explode by 2002 as more customers buy the rack-optimized servers.

The CompactPCI extension to the PCI specification covers server blades -- which are computers on a single motherboard that include the processor, memory, network connections and associated electronics. Server blades can measure from just over 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch high (1/3U to 1/2U), which is much smaller than the present 1U servers. They support a 64-bit bus. Server blades are typically built into enclosures that include power supplies and fans, allowing then to be easily replaced.

Examples of server blades are products from RLX Technologies and FiberCycle. RLX Technologies -- a Houston start-up founded by some ex-Compaq executives -- is making the Razor product, as yet to ship. FiberCycle makes a server blade called the WebBunker FC206I, which is useful for high-density Web serving and will ship this quarter. Both contain the low-power Transmeta Crusoe processor. The WebBunker FC206I contains six CPUs in 2U of space. It costs about $1,500 per blade.

Intel is working on server blade technology and demonstrated a 2U chassis that contained eight Pentium III processors, each with 1 G-byte of RAM; dual 10/100 Fast Ethernet adapters; 30 gigabytes of storage; and redundant power supplies and fans. All components were hot-pluggable and hot-swappable.

Network World