By Uwe Harms, Harms-Supercomputing-Consulting -- In the Platinum Forum, November 28, Compaq presented the different roadmaps of processors and operating systems. More than 180 participants came, important customers and Alpha users. Additionally Compaq listed the most important reasons for the planned merger with Hewlett-Packard. The event was on a high level, as top managers from Compaq and partners presented their view of the actual situation. These have been Josef Blank, Compaq, German Manager HPC. The keynote gave Rich Marcello, Vice President, General Manager High Performance Systems, USA. Other topics have been: - the Intel Itanium strategy, Christian Ganz, Intel - AlphaServer Systems Roadmap and then that of Tru64 Unix, Tom Yeats, Compaq, Director High Performance Servers EMEA - the future of OpenVMS operating system, Bob Blatz, Compaq - the Oracle Partner strategy, Wolfgang Ehrentaler, Oracle - Compaq’s Global Service Strategy, Manfred Leyendecker, Compaq - SAP on Alpha, a user story, Detlef Bolz, SAP SI - server consolidation Andreas Teichert, Compaq - Compaq Storage Works Strategy, Johannes Schröder, Compaq - Alpha HPTC (High-Performance Technical Computing), Martin Walker, Compaq. This article concentrates and summarizes only the reasons for decision for Itanium, the transition from Alpha to Itanium, Tru64 Unix and OpenVMS future and what Compaq and Hewlett-Packard win with the planned merger. The PowerPoint presentations of all talks are accessible via: http://www.compaq.de/news/veranstaltungen/platinum/ Compaq Strategy, Vision and Commitment This was the title of Rich Marcello's talk. He is Vice President and General Manager High Performance Systems from Compaq USA. He presented some reasons and a lot of different aspects for the Itanium and Hewlett-Packard decision. Improving the High Performance Server Business Model In June 2001, Compaq decided to converge all 64-bit enterprise servers over time to the Itanium Processor Family (IPF) architecture. What was behind this move to Itanium? Internally a group of Chip designers examined the development of all the competitive processors and compared the performance with the Alpha roadmap over time. They concluded that Alpha EV7 is ahead of the others up to 2003. But the EV8, which was scheduled for 2005, would be comparable with the Intel IPF of that time. Then the next Intel generations would be faster. Additionally the group expect that IPF will become a standard 64-bit microprocessor. Thus it would be a hard job for Compaq with a lot of investments in the microprocessor development. Rich Marcello showed a slide, where most of the money is spent for the microprocessor and less in this order: servers, business critical applications, software, e-infrastructures and the last was solutions. These two aspects led to the conclusion: save development investments and spend it for all the business critical issues. In the Intel agreement Compaq moves its Alpha knowledge, intellectual properties and the own developer to Intel and thus into next generation's Itanium. They agreed to start a joint engineering development focused on advanced parallelism for high-end computing. The Compaq Alpha Chip developers moved to Intel to integrate EV8 features into coming Itaniums. Significant Alpha microprocessor and compiler technology, tools and resources went to Intel. Intel acknowledged the experience of the Compaq engineers and appointed four new fellows and Daniel Casaletto as Vice president of the Intel Architecture Group, who all came from Compaq. Intel acquired Compaq 64-bit Alpha-based technology, tools and resources to enhance IPF. Both partners join resources and investment to port the complete Compaq operating system environments and application portfolios to Itanium-based enterprise servers. This decision was sufficient for OpenVMS, industry standard servers and the NonStop Himalaya. The planned Hewlett-Packard Merger As Compaq got 7% market share in the Unix market, that means it is number 4. Although Tru64 UNIX was ranked high by D.H. Brown analyses, the growth was estimated at 10%. Over the years it would be difficult to reach #1 or #2 position, 30% share. Marcello named the ISV portfolio as one of the reasons. The merger and the summed market shares would catapult the new company to rank one or two. They want to offer customers the world's best enterprise Unix for the Itanium architecture. Therefore they will put together the best technologies from HP-UX and Tru64 Unix and converge it to a new Unix. Both company's experts will co-operate. Marcello expects that the ISV (Independent Software Vendors) porting and optimizing will increase, as they only have to support one Unix on Itanium. OpenVMS will transferred and its application portfolio including ISV solutions will be migrated to Itanium. The Operating System Roadmap Tru64 UNIX operating system will be enhanced in upcoming releases, additional enhancements are committed through 2006. Compaq will support Tru64 Unix on Alpha up to 2010. The "new" Unix will include features like RAS functionality, clustering, performance oriented features, System Management, file and storage management and networking for example. The transition period starts in 2003 and ends in 2006/2007. First transition tools and services will then be offered. The new, converged enterprise Unix will run on IPF. Compaq expects that it runs in 2003 OpenVMS will be ported to Itanium in 2002. Compaq expects the booting on IPF for 2nd half of 2002, the shipment of the operating system first half of 2003 and the updates in 2nd half of 2003. The transition phase is identical with Tru64 Unix, 2003 to 2007. The same is true with future releases, continued enhancements and support up to 2010. The Alpha Roadmap and its end Compaq is committed to the Alpha system up to the EV7 processor architecture. Actually the company’s EV68 is still delivered. Tom Yeats presented the enhancements of the GS and ES Server series in 2002. The new EV68 CPU is clocked with 1.224/1.25 GHz and has 16 MB cache. In the new servers cpus with different speed can be mixed. The memory performance is improved, up to 8GB/s memory transfer rates. These computers are available in Q3 2002. The DS25 with 1GHz/1.25 GHz will be available in Q2/Q3 2002. The next generation Alpha processor, EV7, will be shipped end of 2002/beginning 2003. The last Alpha, EV79, is scheduled for the 2003/2004 time frame. The transition period is planned from 2003 to 2007. Rich Marcello mentioned that the processor can be delivered after that year. Compaq will continue to sell the Alpha systems as long as there is customer demand The support will continue for a minimum of five years beyond that. The transition period from Alpha to Itanium will start in 2003. Marcello mentioned that one can expect the Madison processor. In 2004 Itanium-based system approach parity in performance with Alpha servers and then will offer an attractive upgrade to EV7 customers in 2005. The upcoming Alpha servers with the EV7, a single chip cpu, are based on two and eight processor building blocks. The 2 processors have up to 8 GB memory, system management, partitions, RAID memory and a height of 1 U. The up to 8 processor systems have a maximum of 256 GB memory, system management, partitions, hot swap I/O, RAID memory and 4U high, available in 2003. The high-end system with the code name Marvel, is the GS1280 and belongs to the GS-series. It is equipped with 2 to 128 processors, 4 TB memory, the same components as the smaller systems. The GS1280 has 8 processor building blocks. The EV7 incorporates the EV68 processor core and on-chip level 2 cache. The official announcement will be in Q4 2002, the 64/128 processor systems will be available in Q4 2003. Communications with Customers Compaq noted that in the past a lot of rumors spread in their customer family, as nothing official except the press releases could be found. In Frankfurt the vendor announced to deepen the communication with the customers. Customer councils and forums as well as partner communications and one on one marketing will be realized in the future - the Platinum event was the first of such a series in Germany. Additionally Compaq starts an AlphaServer Customer Assurance Program. One is the Money back customer satisfaction guarantee on IPF-based systems. Financial assistance and protection with attractive leasing and guarantees for hardware and software. Rich Marcello mentioned that Compaq will provide transition support with workshops, white papers, toolsets, and technical resources plus World Wide Expertise Centers for testing ISV and customer code. IT Investment Protection Tom Yeats summarized Compaq's commitments in this field. Alpha systems will be sold as long as customer demand exists. This will last at least several years after the last EV7 system in 2004. The support is guaranteed for a minimum of 5 years beyond that. Operating system upgrades will be realized for Tru64 Unix, OpenVMS and NonStop Kernel on Alpha, MIPS and Itanium servers. There will be an overlap window of at least two years, then Itanium-based, MIPS-based and Alpha-based systems will be manufactured concurrently. ---------- Uwe Harms is President of Harms-Supercomputer-Consulting in Munich. Supercomputing Online thanks him for his time and insights. ----------