[geeks] New Itanium machines from SGI

[Bjorn Ramqvist]

"Jonathan C. Patschke" wrote:
> 
> I thought when companies jump platforms, they do it because the
> resulting platform is -better- than what's already there (m68k->sparc,
> m68k->PPC, m68k->MIPS), not because it can "rival" the current
> offerings.  How is SGI pulling ahead here?

They rise above the competitors using some damn ass-kicking I/O
capabilities like the NUMAlink 4 (at 50ns). Other technologies like
PCI-X is already out on other x86 architectures, so that's not all that
fancy.
I'd guess there SGI wants to lead, in big honking hardware, not down at
the consumer level or $just_another_peecee_workstation level.

Just look at their Origin offerings. The Origin 300 is just a step-in
platform for people who need the platform. Eventually they will all go
to Origin 3000 series if they need more oomph. Origin 300 scalable to 16
CPUs? Sure, but by what method? Tie a couple of boxes together, but
that's nothing compared to a Origin 3000 interconnected box.


/Bjorn