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Gigabyte's SR-125 Mobo

06:00 - Wednesday 8 May 2002 by Omid Rahmat

Gigabyte was the only mobo vendor we saw on the show floor, although there were a number of Taiwanese and Korean companies peddling their wireless products at the show.

Gigabyte used N+I to announce the availability of its SR-125 1U rackmount server platform. The SR-125 supports dual Xeons, has on-board Ultra-3 SCSI, dual on-board Gigabit Ethernet, and supports upto 12 GB of memory.

Gigabyte had the SR125 1U based rack system board on display in the back room at the booth.

Gigabyte was most excited about the fact that it believes it has the first white box system to deliver four removable SCSI drives in a dual Xeon 1U chassis.

The SR125 comes with four hot swappable SCSI drive bays.

The market for high-end servers is opening up for channel resellers, systems integrators, and VARs. These guys have traditionally had to deal with the fact that the really big server deals usually end up belonging to the brand name OEMs. With more products coming out of Taiwan, the channel guys have products that can compete across the board.

Also on display was this Plumas based board for dual Xeon (Prestonia) chips.

In the same vein, Gigabyte had on display the GA-8IXPDR board using the E7500 (Plumas) chipset from Intel. The board supports dual Xeon (Prestonia) CPUs with 400 and 533 MHz FSB. It has 6 DDR DIMM slots and can support upto 12 GB of PC1600 memory. The Ultra-3 SCSI controller is upgradeable to U320, and the graphics is integrated ATI Rage XL.

Of course, there was also an AMD 760MPX board on show as well for dual Athlons.

To balance things out, there was the GA-7DPXDW-C AMD 760MPX board. It supports up to 4GB of PC1600 memory, dual-channel ATA 100, on-board AC97 software audio, and a single Intel 82550PM 10/100 LAN controller.

HyperTransport - AMD's Hammer Strategy Continues To Evolve

The HyperTransport Consortium used N+I to announce proposed networking extensions to the standard. In order to move HyperTransport into the realm of high-speed data communications, the consortiums' Technical Working Group has developed extensions that improve error handling and allow for message passing for larger packet sizes.

The HyperTransport team evangelizing the new network extensions to the standard. From left to right, Jim Keller, Chief Architect for Broadcom's Processor Business Unit; Brian Holden, Chairperson of the Technical Working Group and Principal Engineer for PMC-Sierra's MIPS Processor Division; Gabriele Sartori, President of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium.

Seven extensions are being added to protocol. The new features are: a message passing protocol; an error recovery protocol; support for 64 bit addresses; 16 additional streaming and dedicated virtual channels; a standardized HyperTransport switching function; and direct peer-to-peer transfer.

HyperTransport is known as a packetized bus, and it does have little packets of data, but from a logical point of view it is a read/write bus. With the new messaging protocol proposed, now you can have source and destination addresses independent of device connects. This means a HyperTransport bus can act as a highway for network traffic to cross from one device to the next, whereas presently data moves from point to point between components.

HyperTransport has an error detection mechanism, but as link rates go up for high speed networking, the probability of errors goes up. The addition of the error recovery protocol means that your HyperTransport device can't drop packets.

In effect, HyperTransport becomes an open freeway. A network decice can direct a result to another look-up device without going through a host. In the past, HyperTransport boxes had memory semantics, but the new extensions give it messaging semantics.

It helps position HyperTransport for the world of Big Iron servers. Low error rates for one box might go unnoticed, but once you have a thousand boxes, you are going to start noticing it. Unfortunately, the level of information about HyperTransport is either very superficial and committee-level positioning, or very dense technical data for engineers. However, it is clear that AMD is pushing to position Hammer for future expansion into the server world.

Products like EmergeCore Networks' IT in a Box kind of hint at why it is important for HyperTransport to interface among the numerous components and devices of the network world. IT in a Box combines a router, switch, server, and application server in one box.

Products like the IT in a Box reflect the challenges that the HyperTransport Consortium wants to meet to give AMD's Hammer greater opportunities in the server market.

HyperTransport has to clearly provide a path and coexist with everything from PCI to Infiniband in devices that incorporate switching, server, and router components. The new extensions should be available in the second half of this year.

<nobox>

Seagate Shows Third Generation 15,000 RPM Cheetah Drive

Seagate used N+I to announce the Cheetah 15K.3 and the Cheetah 10K.6, and a new naming convention. The .3 refers to third generation, and the .6 to the sixth version of the Cheetah 10K. Seagate's emphasis was definitely on total cost of ownership (TCO), and hence, the enterprise. However, the 15K.3 definitely has the enthusiast and the power user in mind, with reduced noise levels and the obvious performance benefits.

The new drives feature Ultra320 SCSI and 2 Gb/second Fiber Channel interfaces. The Cheetah 15K.3 is now available in capacities of 18, 36, and 73 gigabytes, and the acoustics are as low as 3.1 bels at idle. Apparently anything below 2 bels isn't even worth measuring, and at 3.1 bels, Seagate claims people may doubt their drives are actually running because they're so quiet. In addition, the 15K.3 has 3.6 ms average seek time, 609-891 Mb/s internal transfer rate, and 49-75 MB/s sustained transfer rate.

With up to 146GB of storage the Cheetah 10K.6 is a monster. The 10K.6 boasts a 4.7 ms. average seek time, 475-871 Mb/s internal transfer rate, and 38.0 to 68.5 MB/s sustained transfer rates. Suggested Retail Prices (SRP) for single evaluation-units are as follows: