A discussion of blades technology

» Beer cans, pacemakers and blades: Tracking the rise of x86 Supercomputing

-by Richard Fichera

I recently had an opportunity to take a look at the latest Top 500 supercomputer list. Like a lot of people, I was awed by the performance and the churn at the top of the list. Working for a company that makes lots of x86 blade servers, I was pleased to note that several of the top 10 are now clusters of x86 blade servers (and even more pleased to see some were ours). With their share rising from 5% to 75% in about five years, the intrusion of x86 servers into the Top 500 has been rapid and is replete with parallels to the eventual fortunes of dinosaurs at the hands of climate change and competition with more adaptable mammals. The top of the list is fascinating, a geekfest extrodinaire. But what really caught my eye was the composition of the bottom 100 of the list.

» Slicing through more myths about blades

by Gary Thome

There are some myths that seem to get propagated around the industry about blades. I want to take the opportunity to address a couple of myths about the blades market growth and where the growth comes from. I hear these myths shared as certain truths by some people, yet the facts clearly refute them.

1. The blades market is growing fast

» Just what does the “HP BladeSystem c-Class Compatible” designation mean?

This week, Chelsio Communications, Inc., a member of the HP BladeSystem Solution Builder Program and a provider of 10-Gigabit Ethernet NICs, announced their new T3-based S320EM-BS 10 GbE Unified Wire expansion mezzanine card for ProLiant blade servers. Basically, this is a card for connecting servers to a 10 Gb Ethernet network, via the HP 10 Gb Ethernet c-Class switch, for high performance applications, fast storage connections and moving data quickly for disaster recovery systems.