HP has announced “Odyssey,” a project to redefine the future of mission-critical computing with a development roadmap that will unify UNIX and x86 server architectures to a single platform.
Unified Platform
The new unified platform announced last week will attempt to combine the resilience of UNIX-based platforms with the familiarity and cost-efficiency of industry-standard platforms, across a common, modular HP BladeSystem architecture. Operating systems that will continue to iterate include HP-UX and OpenVMS, and innovations will continue for the HP Integrity servers and HP NonStop systems. The HP Superdome 2 enclosure (code name Dragon Hawk) and c-Class blade enclosures are on the roadmap, as well as a fortification of Windows and Linux environments with innovations from HP-UX within the next two years.
“Clients have been asking us to expand the mission-critical experience that is delivered today with HP-UX on Integrity to an x86-based infrastructure,” said Martin Fink, senior vice president and general manager, Business Critical Systems at HP (HPQ). “HP plans to transform the server landscape for mission-critical computing by using the flexibility of HP BladeSystem and bringing key HP technology innovations from Integrity and HP-UX to the x86 ecosystem. Unlike the competition, HP offers an open, integrated, single platform approach.”
DragonHawk
With the Superdome 2 system using Windows or Linux HP enables:
- 32-socket “DragonHawk” symmetrical multiprocessing x86 systems that will scale to hundreds of cores and support large, complex workloads.
- Increase reliability and flexibility with two-, four- and eight-socket “HydraLynx” scalable x86 server blades.
- Enable HP Analysis Engine for x86 to be embedded into the system firmware. HP Analysis Engine goes beyond error logging to ensure efficient diagnoses and automatic repair of complex system errors while restoring system stability in seconds.
- Fault-tolerant HP Crossbar Fabric that intelligently routes data within the system for redundancy and high availability.
"Intel’s continued innovation with a multigeneration Itanium processor roadmap, combined with existing and future mission-critical capabilities of Intel Xeon processors, allow HP and Intel to provide customers with greater flexibility and choice," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager, Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, Intel. "Together with HP we will be able to give customers the ability to do mission-critical computing on their terms, with a broad range of operating systems and applications."
Project Odyssey is a key component of HP's Instant-on Enterprise, and will showcased at HP's annual client event, HP Discover which takes place today (November 29) through December 1 in Vienna, Austria.
