HP Rolls Out New AlphaServer

Hewlett-Packard Co. on Tuesday introduced a new high-density AlphaServer, its first release from the product line since it was acquired in the buyout of Compaq Computer Corp. early this month.

The new DS20L is the first server to pack two 64-bit Alpha processors into a slim 1U (1.75-inch) rack-mounted chassis, the most popular selling form factor on the market today. As a result, customers can now pack up to 40 DS20L servers with 80 CPUs into a 6.5-foot-tall rack, double the density of Compaqs previously released DS10L line.

Although the DS20L was officially launched Tuesday, HP, of Palo Alto, Calif., said it has already sold more than 1,000 of the servers worldwide.

In conjunction with the release of the server, HP announced a new supercomputing system, the SC20, built using DS20L servers. The SC20, available with Tru64 Unix, can combine up to 128 DS20L units via high-speed interconnects to deliver up to 426 gigaflops of performance.

The DS20L, powered by two EV68 833MHz Alpha processors, is targeted at the high-performance technical computing market.

"These AlphaServer systems will be particularly significant for customers in areas such as government security, scientific research and automotive and aerospace engineering, which all need increasingly higher levels of performance but have space and cost constraints," said Rich Marcello, vice president and general manager of HP Alpha Systems Division.

According to market researcher International Data Corp., of Framingham, Mass., sales in the high-performance computing market last year totaled more than $5 billion. HP, with its $19 billion acquisition of Compaq, is now the leading seller of high-performance systems, garnering more than 41 percent of all sales last year.

Pricing for the DS20L, available immediately, starts at just under $18,000 for a two-way system featuring 512MB of memory and 18.2GB of disk storage.

Entry-level prices for the AlphaServer SC20 supercomputer, set for release in August, starts at about $290,000 for a base system with eight processors and 4GB of memory.

As previously announced, HP will halt production of the Alpha processor by 2005, at which time it will migrate the AlphaServer line to Intel Corp.s 64-bit Itanium processors. Before its phased out, however, HP plans to produce two faster versions of the Alpha processor, the EV7 in 2003 and the EV79 in 2004.