IBM brings AMD’s Shanghai to Opteron servers

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AMD’s ‘Shanghai’ finds a home in IBM servers, as efficiency and power savings take centre stage.

IBM has announced four servers that feature AMD's new 45nm Shanghai' Opteron chip, announced yesterday.

IBM has said that its BladeCenter LS42 blade server consumes up to 16 per cent less power than competitor blade offerings, and has fast memory performance making it suitable for virtualisation and database applications.

The LS42 and the two-socket LS22 use solid state drives and in a statement IBM said that these soak up 87 per cent less power than conventional drives, a savings of 20 watts per blade.

The company says that the LS22 is aimed at financial services, universities and oil and gas companies. Customers can purchase the LS22 with a memory booster that gives it 96 per cent faster memory that can improve application performance.

The IBM System x3455 is aimed at scientific, technical, and financial applications with IBM's Xcelerated Memory Technology, which aims to eliminate application bottlenecks by delivering faster access to data.

IBM also touted the flexible architecture of its System x3755. The BladeCenter LS42 and the System x3755 are part of IBM's 2+2 program and can be purchased as two-socket systems and then expanded to four sockets, as business needs grow - a facility which IBM says is unique in the industry.

IBM said the BladeCenter LS42 will be available the new Shanghai quad-cores later this month starting at $5,165 (3,482). However, the System x3455 and x3755 will have to wait until early 2009' to get their upgrades. Those wishing to make use of the 2+2 program on the LS42 and x3755 can do so today.

Click here to read our review of IBM's system x3455 1U Bladeserver.

Benny Har-Even
Benny Har-Even

Benny Har-Even is a twenty-year stalwart of technology journalism who is passionate about all areas of the industry, but telecoms and mobile and home entertainment are among his chief interests. He has written for many of the leading tech publications in the UK, such as PC Pro and Wired, and previously held the position of technology editor at ITPro before regularly contributing as a freelancer.

Known affectionately as a ‘geek’ to his friends, his passion has seen him land opportunities to speak about technology on BBC television broadcasts, as well as a number of speaking engagements at industry events.