Server Blade Summit 2006 gears up

Server Blade Summit 2006 will be held 18 to 20 April in California. The 5th Annual Server Blade Summit will feature server blade design, product creation and telecom centre and data application, according to a press release.

"Server blades are the fastest growing segment of the server market," says Lance Leventhal, Server Blade Summit programme chairperson, adding: "The blade market exceeded $2 billion in 2005, growing by 84% over 2004; and server blade applications are expanding into new areas."

The Summit will address the challenges of reaching new verticals, application types, and markets such as small and medium business.

Fujitsu have brought out an 8-socket version of its Primergy BX630 blade. Like the 4-socket version released last October, the server is powered by dual-core AMD Opteron processors.

"Fujitsu lays claim to being the first of the major OEM to deliver a standard-architecture 8-socket, dual-core blade server system," according to ServerWatch.

The BX630 blade servers can be installed in the current BX600 chassis alongside the Xeon-based BX620 S2 or BX660 blades.

In the newest of a series of moves to try to impart momentum to Intel`s Itanium processor, allies backing the chip are funding work to improve a key programming tool.

The Gelato Federation, an organisation dedicated to boosting Linux on Itanium computers, is overseeing the work, the allies said this week at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

Read more at ZDNet.com.