Time traces

HP last week upped the ante on heterogeneous storage virtualization by unveiling a platform that pools storage across HP and non-HP arrays. The HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform, dubbed SVSP, is for users of Fibre Channel storage-area networks and incorporates HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) and the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA).

The SVSP enables online data migration, thin provisioning, improved storage utilization and data replication. Based on software from LSI, SVSP is an out-of-band, split-path virtualization technology – in SVSP data flow is separated from the management process, thus facilitating the ability to handle larger workloads.

The SVSP makes use of a QLogic switch as a data mover. A separate management server is part of the package. SVSP supports EMC Clariion, IBM Fast and DS4000, SGI’s storage systems and Sun’s FlexLine and 6000.

SVSP competes with IBM’s SAN Volume Controller and EMC’s Invista as well as controller-based virtualization approaches from vendors such as Hitachi Data Systems. HP at present has controller-based heterogeneous replication in its high-end XP product line.

Earlier this year, TheInfoPro set its sights on storage virtualization – the research firm estimates that 35% of Fortune 1000 companies are using the technology. This figure, TheInfoPro says will increase to 50% by 2009.

The package is expected to be available in December. A starting package of 4TB will be $43,900.

The Hewlett-Packard TouchSmart IQ506 may be worthy of the Jetsons’ household. This all-in-one desktop PC is all screen–22 inches of 1650-by-1080-resolution display, with a laptop’s guts hiding inside. Though the TouchSmart ($1500 as of 6/25/08) isn’t a powerhouse desktop machine meant to run graphics-intensive games or to crunch supercomputer-level data, it is a centerpiece system with a multitouch screen that makes you realize you’re playing with a PC that’s slightly ahead of its time.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d mistake the slim, subtle design of the TouchSmart for that of a handsome LCD TV. Walking into the PC World Test Center and seeing it for the first time, I almost did–and not because of the remote or the NTSC/ATSC tuner, which provides access to both analog and over-the-air HD signals. The colors pop on this display.

Like the Gateway One and waves of Apple iMacs, the TouchSmart IQ506 is all about elegance. I was hypnotized, staring at a beautiful-looking machine with a touch screen–something the competition doesn’t offer. This isn’t HP’s first attempt at an all-in-one, either. However, the first-generation TouchSmart IQ770 more closely resembled a highly stylized desktop than it did a display. As much as it got right, a few things disappointed us back then, namely its poky components and the fact that its 19-inch touch screen would recognize only a single point.

This time around, HP takes advantage of Windows Vista’s ability to recognize two points of touch on the screen. Whether you want to zip around documents, enlarge images, or swipe your finger across the display, using the IQ506 is a simple matter of on-screen finger movements. It works just as the iPhone’s screen does: You can pinch your fingers together or push them apart to zoom in or out, for example–you know the drill by now. You can even play some basic games with the touch interface. I stabbed at the screen to move solitaire cards around, and that worked smoothly, but my dreams of playing a first-person shooter using only my finger-of-death aren’t quite a reality yet.

The new TouchSmart PC pulls ahead of other recent all-in-ones with its ability to handle most productivity tasks easily. Its configuration is reasonable, but since this model uses notebook components, it lacks the processing oomph of competing value desktops. The model we tested came with a 2.16-GHz Core 2 Duo T5850 Intel CPU, 4GB RAM, and a 500GB, 7200-rpm hard drive. The TouchSmart sailed through some of our WorldBench 6 tests–everything from Photoshop to media encoding ran smoother on the TouchSmart than it did on the Gateway One, for example. On our gaming tests, however, the TouchSmart’s nVidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics processor brought its performance down (the Gateway ran Doom 3 roughly two times faster, and the iMac did so two and a half times faster). The graphics results torpedoed the IQ506’s WorldBench 6 score, dragging it down to a mark of 79; the Gateway had received an 87.

HP nailed the design aesthetic with the new TouchSmart: This model would look equally at home in your living room, bedroom, or office. It comes with five USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire port, gigabit ethernet, a slot-loading DVD player, an S-Video input, and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in. (I would have loved to see an eSATA port for a high-speed external drive.) But it lacks some of the core inputs you might want for a home media hub, such as component or HDMI input and a Blu-ray Disc burner. Unfortunately, you can’t crack open the case and pop in upgrades–a drawback that prevents the TouchSmart from growing with you.

A serviceable wireless keyboard/mouse combo is included in the box. The system also comes with HP’s excellent, touch-screen-enabled TouchSmart Software Suite. The media-centric software is easy to use and to customize, with mouse or fingers.

Paying the $1500 price buys you a system with classy design, the versatility to handle everyday tasks, and the ability to do some light multimedia lifting. It doesn’t have enough power to deal with more graphics-heavy activities. The TouchSmart is appropriate as a second PC or as a lifestyle PC that fits into your living space, but as your primary system it may not do everything you want it to do.

Sun Microsystems today announced it has licensed its UltraSparc T2 CMT (chip multi-threading) processor, a.k.a. Niagara 2, to Themis Computer, a maker of blade systems for the embedded market.

On the surface, this seems like just another OEM licensing deal, but one analyst thinks it could have enormous potential consequences in the server consolidation drive that many IT shops are on.

Themis Computer develops high-performance Virtual Machine Environment (VME) and Compact PCI single-board computers for industries such as telecommunications, military/aerospace, and industrial embedded applications like medical imaging. It can hold up to 19 blades in one rack chassis.

It’s been a long-time Sun (NASDAQ: JAVA) OEM, but its previous systems were based on the Sun UltraSparc 3i, a processor introduced in 2003. Needless to say, it’s a bit behind the technology curve.

“The 3i has one core and is near end of meaningful life. The UltraSparc T2 has 8 cores. That’s a huge deal,” Bill Kehret, president and CEO of Themis, told InternetNews.com. “It’s not just eight times the performance of 3i because of the cores, it’s significantly more than that.”

Kehret said Themis held on to the old design because it was not keen on Sun’s UltraSparc T1, which had only one floating point core, shared by all eight processing cores. The T2 has a high performance FP core for each of the eight cores, making for considerably improved FP performance.

Themis wanted a much higher performing processor for its military contracts, since they could not afford datacenter sprawl, least of all on a Naval vessel. Even aircraft carriers have their space constraints.

“Some while back, the military decided to ask what would happen if you took an enterprise solution and put it on a ship,” said Kehret. “That’s been happening, and they asked how would we consolidate all these different ecosystems on a ship. What Themis wanted to do was say here’s an ecosystem, why can’t we bring these pieces of technology together?”

But it’s more than just consolidation, said Nathan Brookwood, research fellow with Insight64. He noted that Themis is a licensee of IBM’s BladeCenter blade chassis, which, unlike other blade chassis from HP, Dell or Sun, is an open architecture.

Combining a Themis blade in an IBM BladeCenter means one chassis can hold Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and AMD (NYSE: AMD) x86 processors, IBM (NYSE: IBM) POWER and Cell processors and Sun’s UltraSparc all in one chassis, an incredible consolidation story.

“You can do that for apps that only run on certain platforms, like Sparc apps on the Sparc blade and Intel apps on an Intel or AMD blade,” he said.

“In the past, you would have to have separate boxes for each of those platforms. Now you can just mix and match blades to cover all those architectures. That’s a huge story. This is really a very big story for BladeCenter.”

Fadi Azhari, director of marketing for Sun Microelectronics, said the Themis blades will come out this August, starting at $15,000, and Sun is looking for more design wins. “We are looking to increases the market footprint of our differentiated IP of the UltraSparc T2 and Solaris as well,” he said.