IBM, Sun showcase RISC chips

IBM and Sun Microsystems used the Hot Chips 21 show to give engineers a preview of the RISC chips that are coming down the line, says eWeek.

IBM's Power7 and Sun's 'Rainbow Falls' are both due out in 2010. Intel and AMD also gave presentations on upcoming server chips, including Intel's eight-core 'Nehalem EX' processor. AMD gave more details on its upcoming 12-core 'Magny-Cours' processor.

Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Research, said that a new on-chip memory innovation on the chip is particularly interesting. Called eDRAM, the technology provides 32MB of on-chip L3 cache, which offers a significant boost in both latency and bandwidth over traditional external L3 technologies, King said in a report.

Iomega has unveiled the StorCenter ix4-200d, a four-bay network attached storage system for small to medium enterprises that works with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux operating systems, reports PC World.

The StorCenter x4-200d features four hot-swappable SATA II drive bays which come configured as a RAID 5 array.

Inside, the system is running an embedded Linux operating system equipped with EMC LifeLine software. It's compatible with Apple's Time Machine software, and also comes with Retrospect Express.

Dell has introduced an upgrade of its Dell/EMC CX4 storage arrays that includes a 10 Gigabit Ethernet, which the vendor says addresses the input/output (I/O) needs for the growing compute density of virtualised environments within data centres, states InformationWeek.

The latest version of the CX4 arrays contains an UltraFlex Modular I/O that enables customers to add ports supporting 8Gb and 4Gb fibre channel and 1Gb and 10Gb iSCSI.

The latter enables companies to consolidate "stranded servers" onto an existing storage-area network, support more virtual servers and aggregate multiple 1Gb iSCSI connections to fewer 10Gb ones, Dell said.