Crystal Cube Consulting

BladeCenter HT Lays Siege to AdvancedTCA

Abstract

IBM Systems appear to be at the forefront of Internet Protocol (IP) convergence and with BladeCenter, IBM can allow service providers to optimize their investment in both the data center and the network by offering fully interchangeable blade servers and components.

The pricing, and flexibility, for the BladeCenter servers and the performance comparisons are extremely important to the overall consideration for the platform-of-choice.

The IBM BladeCenter family is a group of commercial off-the-Shelf (COTS) platforms with the computing power needed to help telecommunications service providers lower the costs of servers in the network while increasing the revenues they generate. BladeCenter, with its demonstrated service and support since early 2002, give Telcos a head start just based on the relationship IBM has enjoyed with enterprise-side of the Telcos.

With the diverse wireline / wireless networking, as well as, enterprise application availability, service providers have the option of consolidating application, control, and transport planes on a single platform. IBM believes that this kind of power, versatility and efficiency can help service providers quickly and economically meet the high processing demands of new applications, while handling ongoing I/O nee's through existing equipment.

What the chart below says to us is that, after you’ve taken the cost of the BladeCenter H chassis out of the equation, populating them with the Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5345 delivers over 4 times the value of the best LS41 available. Even the other single-slotted blades do not fair much better, with Intel delivering over 3 times the value over the best LS21 and about 2.5 times better value than the best JS21. 

To us, this speaks to the greater efficiency provided by the Intel® Core™ Microarchitecture. In fact, the very best HS21 blade using the Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5345 actually exceeds the performance of the best LS41 using the AMD Opteron™ processor 8218 by 31.4%, even though they both have the same number of cores and the AMD-based board is double-wide and runs at a higher frequency.

These results are just a current snapshot, and the chart may look different after AMD releases its next round of processors. However, given that Intel will then launch another server chip within a quarter of that one, it may change again. We will try to remain current on this chart as often as is practical. Look to our <http://www.crystalcubeconsulting.com/>website for any updates that we may publish later.

This unique report reviews in detail the BladeCenter family of Platforms including the new HT platform and the solid economic impact it is expected to have on converging networks. Crystal Cube Consulting has compiled a five-year forecast including year-end 2006, and forecasting out from 2007 through 2011.This report includes the revenue growth and port shipments of the IBM BladeCenter family where available and appropriate. Additionally, this groundbreaking report is the first report to cover the revenue and port shipments activity of existing and new BladeCenter platforms and servers; this addressable market is expected to generate in excess of 10 billion dollars by year-end 2011.

Table of Contents

List of Tables

List of Figures

Methodology

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Convergence: Voice / Data & Video Networks

Next Generation Networks

Internet Protocol (IP) and IPTV

Internet Multimedia Subset (IMS)

IBM Value Adding Services

BladeCenter Family

BladeCenter

BladeCenter T

BladeCenter H

BladeCenter HT

Ingredient-Level Technology

Processors

Intel® Xeon® Processors

AMD Opteron™ Processors

IBM POWER™ Processors

IBM Cell Processors

Processor Comparisons

Virtualization

BladeCenter HT vs. AdvancedTCA

Why Has the AdvancedTCA Market Not Grown As Predicted?

AdvancedTCA Did Not Become “the” Standard for LTE

The “Perfect Backplane” Never Materialized

Few Brand Names Strongly Support AdvancedTCA

BladeCenter HT over AdvancedTCA

One Blade Size from NEBS to Datacenter

Economies of Scale

Brand Name Switches

Backplane Capacity

Fabric Daughtercards

Proven Interoperability

Support for All Major Operating Systems

Higher Performance per Watt

More Decisive Standards Body

AdvancedTCA over BladeCenter HT

Multi-Vendor Blade Supply

Better AdvancedMC Support

Rear Transition Modules

Full Mesh Fabric

Summary of Findings

Five-Year Forecasts

NGN Five-Year Forecast 2006 - 2011

Revised ATCA Forecast

Detailed Forecasts for BladeCenter HT

BladeCenter Platform Start-Up Pricing Compared to Sun CT 900

Guidance to Carriers and TEMs