International Business Machines Corp, the world's biggest computer maker, and Intel Corp said they'll work together to tap a new market for super-slim servers that run electronic transactions and e-mail.
The accord means IBM and the largest chipmaker will jointly develop so-called blade servers and work on adding features for networking and data storage in future devices. Neither company would comment on the terms of the multiyear agreement.
Blades pile chips and a hard drive on one board the size of a book, rather than current pizza-box-sized models. The market for blade servers will surge to US$3.7 billion in 2006 from US$133 million this year, IBM said, citing researcher IDC. Clients are trying to cram more servers into less space and still trim energy consumption, and analysts expect blades to make that possible.
"Blades are the next big thing," Tim Dougherty, director of IBM's blade-server strategy, said in an interview. "That's what you'll see take off in 2003."
Armonk, New York-based IBM is set to unveil its first blade this month, and rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co. have models selling now. The project with Intel will help IBM introduce new features faster and will make these servers able to tackle more advanced workloads than competing products, Dougherty said.
IBM shares fell US$0.18 to US$72.32 Monday and have slid 40 percent this year. Intel fell US$0.33 to US$15.70.
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