HPC customers can now put a Gateway in their datacenter

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Chris Mellor over at The Register reported yesterday that Acer, which owns eMachines and Gateway among other PC brands, is making a move to try to get into the SMB and HPC markets.

Acer serversGateway will now offer server and storage products focused on the mainstream SMB and HPC markets. The servers will use Intel 4-core Nehalem processors with system software by Microsoft, including Windows Server 2008 (and Hyper-V), and Windows HPC Server 2008. There are tower (GT) models, rack (GR) models, blade (GB) models, and HPC (Gemini brand) models.

Gianluca Degliesposti, Acer’s EMEA VP for global server business development, said the servers are ready to take 4- and 6-core Westmere processors. HPC customers will be offered blade and modular servers.

In order to provide a more complete solution, Acer will be re-branding BlueArc’s Mercury lineup of storage products, and Gateway is going to offer preconfigured solutions to streamline ordering.

Degliesposti said Acer was also partnering with Panasas for HPC parallel file system storage applications. Customers needing the low latency access of flash will be offered Intel X25 solid state drives (SSDs), Hitachi AMS storage having such SSDs in their roadmap. Panasas is also looking to use these SSDs. He said both are waiting on Samsung and on Intel enlarging X25 capacity with its move to the next process geometry in the middle of 2010.

…Reflecting its lack of HPC market presence Acer/Gateway will offer a series of tools, including bid management, demonstration programs, and HPC competency centres to support its channel. Acer will create dedicated HPC Competency Centres worldwide to help customers to investigate and develop HPC systems.

More in the story.