IBM To Ship New Blades In November

The IBM BladeCenters, developed by the computer giant's eServer group, will support Linux, Microsoft Windows and Novell operating systems, the company said.

While IBM comes to the blade server dance later than rivals such as Hewlett-Packard, the company says comparable HP systems have shipped to market for as much as 25 percent higher acquisition cost. In addition, IBM says it effectively manages heat generated by the 2GHz Xeon processors by leveraging existing technology it has developed around higher-end servers and mainframes.

"We were able to tap into the mechanical packaging skills for people who have done high-end, hot systems," said Tom Bradicich, CTO for IBM's xSeries server line. "If you were to examine the box, you would see some very innovative ways we're bringing cooling into the platform."

A BladeCenter server priced at $1,879 will begin shipping in November, according to IBM. A BladeCenter server with a 2GHz Intel Xeon processor, 512 Mbytes of DDR memory, a 40-Gbyte ATA disk drive and two Gigabit Ethernet connections will be priced at $2,178, IBM said.

The company said the design calls for the BladeCenters to be "twice as dense" as a standard 1U server. Also, systems have been designed so that as many as 84 BladeCenter servers can fit in a single rack, IBM said.