IBM Corp says its latest high-end server computer, the pSeries 690, will sell for as little as half the price of an equivalent unit from Sun Microsystems Inc and perform better.
After five years of development, the largest computer maker will ship the system, code-named Regatta, in December as it seeks to cut further into Sun's share of the market for servers running the Unix operating system. Analysts caution that clients may focus more on the costs of configuring and integrating complex software on the server than on the price of each machine.
IBM says it will sell for US$762,000 a Regatta model that has equivalent memory and processors to one of Sun's Sun Fire 15K units priced at US$1.4 million. The Sun Fire 15K was announced last week. Similarly, IBM says it will sell for US$1 million and US$1.7 million Regatta models equivalent to Sun Fire 15Ks priced at US$1.8 million and US$3.3 million, respectively.
``It's going to be a very aggressive attack on Sun,'' as well as on Hewlett-Packard Co and Compaq Computer Corp, said server analyst Jonathan Eunice with Illuminata Inc, a technology consultancy. "IBM has been hurting Sun, and Regatta steps up the pace."
IBM, based in Armonk, New York, already has sold units to DuPont Co, Raytheon Co, and Royal Ahold NV, among others.
Yesterday, IBM said credit-worthy clients that buy lower-priced Regatta models this quarter can qualify for 5.1 percent financing and a 90-day payment deferral.
IBM says it was able to cut the number of components used to process data by designing a new chip, called Power4, that contains two microprocessors sharing memory and communications functions on the same piece of silicon. Until now, the standard configuration was one processor per chip.
Each Power4 processor will run at 1.1GHz, compared with Sun's 900MHz chips, IBM said. A costlier "turbo" version of Power4 will run at 1.3GHz.
Processing speed and other design enhancements will allow a Regatta model to double the performance of a Sun system with the same number of processors, said Ravi Arimilli, chief technology officer of IBM's Power systems. A spokesman for Palo Alto, California-based Sun couldn't be reached to comment.
``We did a total system design from the ground up, and it was a big risk,'' Arimilli said, adding that IBM has filed applications for 500 patents on Regatta.
A team of fresh college graduates based in Austin, Texas, sprinkled with IBM mainframe computer veterans transplanted from Poughkeepsie, New York, borrowed the concept of tightly integrated components from mainframe designs, then worked to cut costs, Arimilli said.
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