HP out and proud with 8-socket server beast

256GB of RAM, WOW!!

256 Gigabytes of RAM with 8GB DIMMS, WOW!!! ....I can't even begin to imagine how that would cost!!

Just what I need to run Ableton

(music performance software)

Pity it's 32-bit only, but the next release should give me what I need. Now I just have to find USD17k.

I'm thinking my 450W power monitors will drown out the sound of the fans, especially when making gabba.

@AC

It's 256GB with 4GB DIMMs and 512GB with 8GB DIMMs.

There are already servers out that can carry more than that.

For those interested in Alpha here

Still shipping for the next few years ;-)

http://www.multisgroup.com/News_Item.asp?News_ID=47

There's no Market for this box

Intel's moving to 6 cores.

With 4 core technology, that's already 6 X 4 = 24 cores of processing power, before you bring in technologies such as Oracle RAC etc for intelligent clustering and load balancing.

I've come across dozens of customers in the last few years who claim to have a need for 8-ways and invariably it's just ill-informed server techs who want the prowess of a big box to play with [there ar exceptions but ver very few]. We all know that CPU technology does not scale linearly beyond 4 sockets and this is why HP and Dell pulled out of this market in the first place.

I have a feeling that HP has not done its homework on this as if anything, the game has changed even more with virtualization technologies such as VMWare and Xen.

"CPU technology does not scale linearly beyond 4 sockets "

It doesn't scale if you're Intel, and doesn't scale if you're Microsoft. Others have been more successful, but as you rightly point out, the number of situations which really benefit isn't particularly large. Now folks in those relatively uncommon situations have another option, which must be good for most folks (except Unisys and any other niche vendor who's previously been trying to flog high-socket-count systems).

RE AC and Mark Mulvaney

RE: AC - "Maybe HP think 8 sockets will become even more important when Intel stop making plans for the next generation of Itanium...." <Yawn> Did someone rattle the nutcage again? You mention Nonstop as replacing Itanium servers, which shows your complete lack of knowledge, as Nonstop is an Itanium platform.... D'uh!

"....to Sun (tricky task, that "retain trust" thing already upset Alpha customers bigtime once...)...." Oh, and all those Sun flip-flops on their schizophrenic roadmaps make them look so reliable ("we hate Linux <flip> we love Linux just look at my penguin suit <flop> we don't have a Linux strategy period <flip> we love Red Hat <flop> give Red Hat the boot <flip> Solaris on SPARC <flop> Solaris on x86 <flip> Windows on x86 <flop> Solaris on T1/T2 <flip> don't buy APL, wait for Rock <flop> buy APL with FSC's SPARC64 whilst we struggle with Rock <flop, flop, flop>"). Check the IDC figures, HP has retained the Alpha customers, they have grown the Itanium bizz, and SPARC is shrinking and dying. Customers appreciate the steady and reliable strategy of HP, which is why they sold eight times as many servers in Q4 2007 as Sun. Double d'uh!

RE: Mark Mulvaney - HP didn't promise anything, if you check all vendors put lots of lovely disclaimers on their roadmaps, including King of the Flip-Flops Sun. If you are too stupid to read the small print then it's no surprise you're now running Slowaris. HP instead looked at the work AdvFS would entail compared to the benefits, then checked with market-leading file-system provider Veritas and decided Veritas had the better product with the better development potential, and it was already ready for hp-ux. And, of course, there's no nasty intellectual property disputes with Veritas/Symantec, unlike with Sun whom (IMHO) half-inched ZFS from NetApp.

"....Also they should have ported HP-UX to x86-64..." Unlike Sun, HP realised that porting their commercial UNIX would put them in conflict with the rising tide of Linux. HP is now the leading server vendor for Linux by a massive amount, making piles more money than the tiddly amount Sun makes with Slowaris x86. What HP did do was carefully port tools like ServiceGuard to Linux, to enhance the Linux experience, rather than being stubbornly stupid and trying too defeat Linux like Sun failed to do. The result is that HP is a respected figure in the Linux community and in the businessplace, whereas Sun is viewed by the Linux community as a smaller M$, and in the businessplace Sun is viewed with distrust given their inability to deliver such monumentally hyped flops as UltraSPARC V and their indecision on Linux and Windows. Please borrow a "d'uh" from AC seeing as you seem to like using other people's work.

How Many HP Engineers Does it Take To Screw In A Light Bulb...

Ok...this might be the dumbest thing I've heard come out of HP (and there have been plenty). With the company doing so well right now, why open up the doors for Dell to make a fool out of you with the best performance per watt and plethora of clustering technology?

-256GB's of RAM exist today

-6 cores are coming soon

-Good clustering technology exists

-Green IT is the NUMBER 1 CIO priority...this box will not be green at all.

Buy Dell stock now!