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Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers
Summary
Fujitsu has produced a range of servers that offers class-leading levels of scalability and availability. But
will the PRIMEPOWER XA SPARC/Solaris servers escape from Sun's shadow?
Note
The PRIMEPOWER servers are designed and manufactured by Fujitsu Limited in Japan. Fujitsu and its
international subsidiaries market them in the Asia/Pacific region and the Americas. In Europe, Middle East
and Africa (EMEA), Fujitsu Siemens Computers markets the PRIMEPOWER servers, a joint 50/50
venture established by the merger of Fujitsu's and Siemens' European computer operations.
Table of Contents
Overview
Analysis
Pricing
Competitors
Strengths
Limitations
Insight
List Of Tables
Table 1: Overview: PRIMEPOWER XA Enterprise Servers
Table 2: High-Availability Features: PRIMEPOWER XA Enterprise Servers (900,1500 and 2500)
Table 3: PRIMEPOWER Clustering Software
Table 4: Fujitsu SPARC64 vs. Sun UltraSPARC III Cu
Table 5: Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER XA Enterprise Models
Table 6: Competitive Comparison: PRIMEPOWER 2500/1500
Table 7: Competitive Comparison: PRIMEPOWER 900
List Of Figures
Figure 1: PRIMEPOWER XPARs and PPARs
Gartner
© 2003 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be
reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations
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DPRO-97941
Ian Brown
Product Report
17 April 2003
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Summary of Contents for Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER 900
- Page 1 17 April 2003 Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers Summary Fujitsu has produced a range of servers that offers class-leading levels of scalability and availability. But will the PRIMEPOWER XA SPARC/Solaris servers escape from Sun’s shadow? Note The PRIMEPOWER servers are designed and manufactured by Fujitsu Limited in Japan. Fujitsu and its international subsidiaries market them in the Asia/Pacific region and the Americas.
- Page 2 PRIMEPOWER 2000. PRIMEPOWER 900 The PRIMEPOWER 900 is housed in a 17U-high rack-mount chassis. (A “U” is the abbreviation for rack unit and is equal to 1.75 inches.) It supports up to two system boards; each incorporates CPUs, memory DPRO-97941 ©...
- Page 3 Like the PRIMEPOWER 1500 and 2500, the Model 900 has the enhanced XA crossbar. It’s not clocked as fast on the PRIMEPOWER 900 and 1500 as on the 2500—on the 900 and 1500, the system clock runs at 270MHz, resulting in a sustained throughput of 34.6 GB/second across the crossbar. The PRIMEPOWER 900 has a single-level crossbar, a single backplane and a single system clock, but features redundant power supplies, fans and disks (disk mirroring software is required for redundancy).
- Page 4 Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers which also supported up to 128 processors, but required additional cabinets for configurations of more than 64 CPUs and for I/O extension. The PRIMEPOWER 2500’s system boards do not include any internal PCI slots, but they each connect up to two PCI/disk boxes.
- Page 5 Future enhancements include faster SPARC64 V processors, with 1.62GHz versions on the roadmap, followed by Fujitsu’s sixth-generation SPARC64 chip, code-named Olympus, which is planned for the second half of 2004. This will be a dual-core processor, but will be pin-compatible with SPARC64 V and the XA servers.
- Page 6 Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers Table 1: Overview: PRIMEPOWER XA Enterprise Servers Model PRIMEPOWER PRIMEPOWER 1500 PRIMEPOWER 2500 Date October October 2002/March 2003 October 2002/March 2003 Announced/Ge 2002/March neral 2003 Availability System Crossbar Crossbar Dual-redundant crossbar Architecture Microprocesso SPARC64 V...
- Page 7 ESCoD’s dynamic functionality allows customers to add and release components as required. (2) U.S. List Price. (3) Depends on geographical location and proximity of Fujitsu-authorized service center. Two additional Enhanced and Premium (full 24×365) service upgrades are available. DPRO-97941 ©...
- Page 8 Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers Table 2: High-Availability Features: PRIMEPOWER XA Enterprise Servers (900,1500 and 2500) Hot-Plug System Boards Hot-Sparing of COD Supported in ESCoD CPUs Failure Prediction Dynamic Degradation: when threshold of intermittent errors is reached, Solaris can...
- Page 9 2001, even though it was formed in part from the Amdahl organization, which Fujitsu owned. Fujitsu has in fact been a global player for a number of years and not only owned Amdahl, but also owned ICL (another mainframe vendor) in Europe, as well as producing a range of computers from PCs through to mainframes for its home market in Japan.
- Page 10 Technology If Unix market share and awareness belie the true size of Fujitsu/FSC as vendors, then what about the product itself? What other attributes does it have besides binary compatibility with SPARC/Solaris? The PRIMEPOWER servers’ most compelling attributes derive from their advanced technology. The 1.35GHz SPARC64 V chips are around 35 percent more powerful than Sun’s 1.2GHz UltraSPARC III...
- Page 11 SymfoWare. We believe the PRIMEPOWER 2500 will maintain its lead on OLTP benchmarks through 2003, but Fujitsu should use Oracle if it really wants to prove itself against the competition. A 128-way server running Oracle is not likely to look so good in price/performance terms, however. Nevertheless, only a very small number of clients will ever require such high levels of scalability.
- Page 12 SPARC64 V in late 2003/early 2004, new dual-core SPARC64-VI processors in the second half of 2004 and SPARC64-VII (up to four cores and 5- to 6GHz) in 2006/07. But will Fujitsu still be prepared to invest further in subsequent SPARC64 processors if market share remains low compared with the Unix leaders? Fujitsu certainly isn’t restricting itself to SPARC64 and in January 2003 announced plans to develop high-...
- Page 13 To sum up, the PRIMEPOWER servers are a very viable alternative to Sun, provided clients are located in geographical areas that are well served by Fujitsu, FTSI or FSC. In North America and some parts of EMEA, the vendors’ local organizations may still be limited, however, and clients should ask for references of customers in their vicinity.
- Page 14 Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers Table 5: Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER XA Enterprise Models Model Description Price ($) PRIMEPOWER 900 High-End Configuration As above, but with 16 578,000 CPUs and 32GB of memory PRIMEPOWER 1500 Low-End Configuration PRIMEPOWER 1500 base 393,000...
- Page 15 1500 and 2500 also compete against IBM’s pSeries 690, HP’s Superdome, and IBM’s zSeries 900. With its maximum of 16 processors, the PRIMEPOWER 900 competes in the midrange sector of the Unix server market. Competitors include the Sun Fire 6800, HP rp8400, and IBM pSeries 650 and 670.
- Page 16 Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers Table 6: Competitive Comparison: PRIMEPOWER 2500/1500 PRIMEPOWER PRIMEPOWER HP Superdome IBM p690 Sun F15K 2500-128 1500 Maximum 64 or 128 72 or 106 (1) Number of Processors Supported Maximum 256GB (64- 128GB 256GB 256GB...
- Page 17 Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers Table 6: Competitive Comparison: PRIMEPOWER 2500/1500 PRIMEPOWER PRIMEPOWER HP Superdome IBM p690 Sun F15K 2500-128 1500 High-Availability Features Processor/Syst Instruction retry; Instruction retry; Dynamic Dynamic CPU de- em Board parity protection parity protection (online) CPU...
- Page 18 (5) The PRIMEPOWER 2000 with 128 SPARC64 GP (563MHz) processors achieved a throughput of 2,345,000 steps/hr and 7,800 users. (6) The PRIMEPOWER 2000 with 128 SPARC64 GP (563MHz) processors achieved a throughput of 34,260 assembly orders/hr. Table 7: Competitive Comparison: PRIMEPOWER 900 Fujitsu HP server IBM pSeries 670...
- Page 19 Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers Table 7: Competitive Comparison: PRIMEPOWER 900 Fujitsu HP server IBM pSeries 670 Sun Fire 6800 Unisys ES7000 PRIMEPOWER rp8400 Aries 230 System Software Operating Sun Solaris 8 or HP-UX 11i IBM AIX 5L Sun Solaris...
- Page 20 The PRIMEPOWER servers offer unprecedented levels of reliability, availability and serviceability features compared with other Unix enterprise-class servers. Fujitsu is the first RISC chip designer to include features such as parity checking on registers and execution units, instruction retry and automatic hardware-based error degradation (taking a processor offline if too many single-bit errors are occurring).
- Page 21 In the first quarter of 2002, Fujitsu rolled its Amdahl IT Services (AITS) business into Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Inc., in North America. It is still in the process of creating a truly global service business. Fujitsu owns numerous disparate services organizations around the world, but these have not always been complementary, and they are not all integrated.