With a wave of eight-way Intel Profusion servers breaking onto the market Hitachi Data Systems Ltd has introduced what it claims is a second generation of its own Profusion-based VisionBase servers which it has been shipping for some nine months now.
HDS, which took an early ‘snapshot’ of the Corollary Profusion design and created its own chipsets for the VisionBase server has chopped the design down to a cabinet which now takes up 10U rackmount units compared with 17U for the original 8880R. The new 8890R has 12 PCI slots compared to the initial system and costs from $30,000 to $90,000. It is designed for use with NT, SCO UnixWare, NetWare, Solaris and Linux, but is seen primarily as an NT engine.
Compaq Computer Corp last week announced its own Profusion-based ProLiant servers declaring all non-Intel Profusion implementations to be non-standard. HDS denies the charge and says its implementation delivers 1.6Gbps throughput versus’ the 1.1Gbps to 1.3Gbps delivered by Intel’s chipset. Moreover, HDS points to the couple of hundred 8880R customers it claims to have. They clearly don’t believe the product is non-standard, it says.
HDS isn’t doing anything new with its Profusion chipset design. Intel’s IA-64 architecture is the target for anything bigger than eight-ways on Intel, the company says.
