Evidence of Xstation? (OR is that Xserve lite?)

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
The graphic of the Xserve rack on the Xcode page shows a different looking 1U blade:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/xcode.html



What is that?

Is that another slip up revealing a new 1U blade from Apple with only 1 drive bay? Or is that the Xserve 'node' or 'lite' model?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    wmfwmf Posts: 1,164member
    That's the Xserve Cluster Node.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    rmendisrmendis Posts: 71member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by wmf

    That's the Xserve Cluster Node.



    Well, perhaps when Apple gets around to updating the Xserve with low power PPC970s, they may be able to make the "Cluster Node" version a quad processor machine? (With all that extra space available)
  • Reply 3 of 10
    henriokhenriok Posts: 537member
    Blade-modules are mounted vertically, just like the disks in the Xserve RAID-system.
  • Reply 4 of 10
    Well, I think that something like this is in the wind. Moki hinted at the imminent arrival of something "heavy", and then clammed up when queried about it after the keynote. And over in the Ars forums, Mr NSX dropped some hints about "thinking outside the box", but likewise clammed up about their import.



    Apart from these clues, I wonder if we should attach any importance to the amount of work that went into making the G5 towers quiet. As programmer (I think) said in another thread, it's hard to see Apple stuffing more than two CPUs into this case, at least on the current process. But not all systems need to be quiet, right? Especially if they live in a server room!
  • Reply 5 of 10
    Nice catch, rmendis! Man. What the heck is that? I wonder if we're witnessing the demise of another Apple Web Developer.



    That is not an existing, public mac blade. Notice that the top one is the xServe, but the rest are definitely different.



    Matty



    I now see that this is an image of the cluster node, as someone else pointed out. I didn't realize it looked different: http://www.apple.com/r/store/gallery/xserve2003/3.html



  • Reply 6 of 10
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Matty8r

    Nice catch, rmendis! Man. What the heck is that? I wonder if we're witnessing the demise of another Apple Web Developer.



    That is not an existing, public mac blade. Notice that the top one is the xServe, but the rest are definitely different.



    Matty




    Um...this was put up as an Xserve model about two months ago. Notice the 'Cluster Node' choice?



    EDIT: You finally noticed, Matty.
  • Reply 7 of 10
    Yeah, sorry about that. I haven't been as tuned into the xServe stuff...
  • Reply 8 of 10
    airslufairsluf Posts: 1,861member
  • Reply 9 of 10
    Quote:

    Originally posted by AirSluf

    Remember where Mr NSX works... ATI. Also remember the talk of potential Hypertransport connections for GPU's.



    So ... you're thinking of distributed renders across banks of GPUs?



    My own thoughts are vague and inexpert. I would have thought that a dedicated video workstation was almost a certainty, in view of Apple's s/w acquisitions. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine a better tower for musical work, so perhaps we could say that the G5 towers serve double duty as top-notch audio boxes along with their general purpose work.



    This is a roundabout way of saying that maybe there is indeed a dedicated video workstation coming. And perhaps GPU-based rendering is part of the package.



    Apart from that, updated XServes are pretty much a given. And I'd like to think that a G5 Blade server is highly likely as well.



    What I'd really like to see in the next 12 months would be a kind of "blade for the rest of us". A bigger tower that accepts plugged in mobos, talking across an HT backplane. This is probably crazy talk w.r.t. the current process, but maybe when the 970 migrates to 0.9 micron things will change.
  • Reply 10 of 10
    rmendisrmendis Posts: 71member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by boy_analog

    I would have thought that a dedicated video workstation was almost a certainty, in view of Apple's s/w acquisitions.



    Being able to produce the hardware gets Apple only half way there...there's also the marketing and sales aspect.



    Here is where i think an SGI acquisition would come in.



    SGI is also a member of the HyperTransport consortium and is developing a HyperTransport NUMA switch.



    If Apple were to acquire SGI, SGI could produce and sell 4-8 way G5 Mac OS X workstations with perhaps the workstation class graphics chips from nVidia and ATI: FireGL and Quadro.



    I think this year would be a good time for that to happen...perhaps as soon as or around about the time Panther comes out...just in time for x'mas
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