Chipset Review & ServerWorks

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David Nguyen

Hello,
What are strengths and wicknesses of serverworks chipset, do you have
any review about it. Why is there so few motherboards using them ?
What manufacters are using them ? SuperMicro, Tyan, IWill ...

In general do you have websites to advise me to look about chipset, cpu
or motherboard in general ? And also about server.

Thanks
 
David Nguyen's log on stardate 12 stu 2004
Hello,
What are strengths and wicknesses of serverworks chipset, do you have
any review about it. Why is there so few motherboards using them ?
What manufacters are using them ? SuperMicro, Tyan, IWill ...
Click to expand...

SW chipsets are pure _server_ chipsets. You will usually find them on
dual/quad systems, supporting multi L3 MB cached Xeons, loads of RAM and
generally with PCI-X slots only. They are pretty rare, IME, since only
really heavy (thus expensive) duty servers need them. Mind you that 3GHz
Gallatins /w 4 MB L3 cache cost about 4k$.
 
David said:
Hello,
What are strengths and wicknesses of serverworks chipset, do you have
any review about it. Why is there so few motherboards using them ?
What manufacters are using them ? SuperMicro, Tyan, IWill ...
Click to expand...

There used to be a time when most of the motherboards and system
builders used them for their Intel processors. That was when the
Serverworks chipsets were not only used for heavy-duty four-way-plus
servers, but also by lower priced two-way servers.

These days, Intel has pretty much got the market cornered on the two-way
server chipsets. And the really the demand for more than two-way on
Intel Xeon processors is pretty limited and specialized, so there's not
much of a living to be made there.

These days Serverworks is refocusing on making chipsets for AMD Opterons.

Yousuf Khan
 
There used to be a time when most of the motherboards and system
builders used them for their Intel processors. That was when the
Serverworks chipsets were not only used for heavy-duty four-way-plus
servers, but also by lower priced two-way servers.

These days, Intel has pretty much got the market cornered on the two-way
server chipsets.
Click to expand...

Not a difficult task for Intel to accomplish considering that they
won't license the bus for their newest 2P Xeons to Serverworks
anymore. If anyone wants to build a 2P Xeon server with the new
"Nocona" chips, they pretty much NEED to use an Intel chipset, whether
they want to or not.

You can still buy 2P and even 1P servers using Serverworks chipsets
(eg the HP DL140 and DL320 or the Dell PowerEdge 1750 or 2650). In
fact, pretty much all of the 533MT/s bus speed P4/Xeon servers sold
are using Serverworks chipsets. However if you want an 800MT/s P4 or
Xeon in your server, it's Intel for you.
And the really the demand for more than two-way on
Intel Xeon processors is pretty limited and specialized, so there's not
much of a living to be made there.

These days Serverworks is refocusing on making chipsets for AMD Opterons.
Click to expand...

Not surprising since Intel has decided they don't want them anymore.
They didn't exactly have a whole lot of choice!

And, before anyone asks, yes this is a move that definitely come back
to bite Intel on the ass. Considering that Intel makes ALL their
money from processor sales, it really doesn't make sense to me for
them to endanger these sales for the extremely low-margin of chipset
sales, but then again, a lot of things Intel has done over the past
few years haven't made much sense to me.
 
Not a difficult task for Intel to accomplish considering that they
won't license the bus for their newest 2P Xeons to Serverworks
anymore. If anyone wants to build a 2P Xeon server with the new
"Nocona" chips, they pretty much NEED to use an Intel chipset, whether
they want to or not.

You can still buy 2P and even 1P servers using Serverworks chipsets
(eg the HP DL140 and DL320 or the Dell PowerEdge 1750 or 2650). In
fact, pretty much all of the 533MT/s bus speed P4/Xeon servers sold
are using Serverworks chipsets. However if you want an 800MT/s P4 or
Xeon in your server, it's Intel for you.


Not surprising since Intel has decided they don't want them anymore.
They didn't exactly have a whole lot of choice!

And, before anyone asks, yes this is a move that definitely come back
to bite Intel on the ass. Considering that Intel makes ALL their
money from processor sales, it really doesn't make sense to me for
them to endanger these sales for the extremely low-margin of chipset
sales, but then again, a lot of things Intel has done over the past
few years haven't made much sense to me.
Click to expand...

From what I've read in various places, Serverworks/Broadcom was trying to
negotiate a deal with Intel, involving an intra-company "IP firewall",
which would have allowed them to do both Intel and AMD chipsets. There's a
suggestion that Intel got pissed at such a move and rather than negotiate,
decided to terminate the license. Broadcom and Intel also do not have a
history of friendly collaboration, following all the extended legal
tussles.

OTOH the Serverworks Opteron chipset effort has gone quiet for some months
now - nothing since June that I've seen and I wonder how much talent they
have left to pull it off. AFAIK they hadn't done anything much on the
Intel side either since the big uproar around the departure of the original
Serverworks principals, Raju Vegesna et.al.. I believe it was also
mentioned that Duane Dickhut had (been) moved on too so the status of the
"team" looks kinda uncertain.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??
 
George Macdonald said:
From what I've read in various places, Serverworks/Broadcom was trying to
negotiate a deal with Intel, involving an intra-company "IP firewall",
which would have allowed them to do both Intel and AMD chipsets. There's a
suggestion that Intel got pissed at such a move and rather than negotiate,
decided to terminate the license. Broadcom and Intel also do not have a
history of friendly collaboration, following all the extended legal
tussles.
Click to expand...

Nobody gets along with Intel. It puts Nvidia's decision to not even
bother with a Pentium chipset into some greater light. They knew they
wouldn't get along with Intel, so they didn't even bother with
negotiating a license with them, and never even tried to design
anything for them. Why bother when there are much more reasonable
partnering opportunities, like AMD?

ATI on the other hand started out trying to make its fortune on Intel
chipsets, and put the AMD chipsets on the backburner to concentrate on
Intel. Brought their Intel chipsets out, and found out that Intel was
already parked on their marketshare. Now they have come to compete in
the AMD market after having their noses bloodied a little bit.
OTOH the Serverworks Opteron chipset effort has gone quiet for some months
now - nothing since June that I've seen and I wonder how much talent they
have left to pull it off. AFAIK they hadn't done anything much on the
Intel side either since the big uproar around the departure of the original
Serverworks principals, Raju Vegesna et.al.. I believe it was also
mentioned that Duane Dickhut had (been) moved on too so the status of the
"team" looks kinda uncertain.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure they are expected to keep putting out press releases
about their chipset. Their original announcement suggested that they
have collaborated with Sun to produce a Opteron super-chipset (greater
than 8 processors). Sun has made some small announcements that they
are now ready to make use of the technology they obtained from
purchasing the Kelia startup. Kelia was apparently working on
multi-way Opteron servers, so it's likely that there is a connection
between the Serverworks chipset and the Kelia servers. The big-iron
Serverworks chipsets will be exclusive to Sun for a little while. The
regular Serverworks chipsets will not be any different than any other
chipset for Opteron, supporting upto 8 processors.

Plus with the Newisys Horus announcement, there seems to be some level
of competition to see who finishes first with a super-chipset, so they
probably don't want any details leaking out about their progress.

As for the old Serverworks principals, I wonder if they left because
they were not pleased with the deterioration of their relationship
with Intel under Broadcom? It was obvious that this was going to
happen if they got involved with Broadcom, considering
Broadcom/Intel's history. They were probably just looking for the
quick, big payout without considering the future of their company
first. Oh well, despite the Intel relationship meltdown, they are
probably now well positioned to start a new life as an Opteron chipset
maker.

Yousuf Khan
 
Nobody gets along with Intel. It puts Nvidia's decision to not even
bother with a Pentium chipset into some greater light. They knew they
wouldn't get along with Intel, so they didn't even bother with
negotiating a license with them, and never even tried to design
anything for them. Why bother when there are much more reasonable
partnering opportunities, like AMD?
Click to expand...

nVidia also knew the license for the FSB "technology" would never be free
from Intel. With AMD they just had to join the Hypertransport consortium.
What's funny just now is that VIA is selling Intel P4 chipsets which cannot
be officially rated above 533MT/s but they are umm, touted as err, "very
overclockable".;-)
ATI on the other hand started out trying to make its fortune on Intel
chipsets, and put the AMD chipsets on the backburner to concentrate on
Intel. Brought their Intel chipsets out, and found out that Intel was
already parked on their marketshare. Now they have come to compete in
the AMD market after having their noses bloodied a little bit.
Click to expand...

Well Intel actually produced a respectable integrated graphics chip
themselves so that opportunity was cut off at the pass. A bit late to jump
into the AMD chipset market and VIA has actually done a very good job there
so there's pretty strong price pressure, especially at the low end of the
market.
I'm not sure they are expected to keep putting out press releases
about their chipset.
Click to expand...

IMO it would be reasonable for them to have made some noise by now - Fall
was mentioned as a timeframe for "something" and even if they don't have
the actual item yet, every company has marketroids who love to make
optimistic noises... C.F. Intel.:-) It would certainly be appropriate,
IMO, to be hearing about prototype and sample stage schedules as well as
uptake by system developers... especially considering that there is
additional lead time to actually engineer mbrds around the product.
Their original announcement suggested that they
have collaborated with Sun to produce a Opteron super-chipset (greater
than 8 processors). Sun has made some small announcements that they
are now ready to make use of the technology they obtained from
purchasing the Kelia startup. Kelia was apparently working on
multi-way Opteron servers, so it's likely that there is a connection
between the Serverworks chipset and the Kelia servers. The big-iron
Serverworks chipsets will be exclusive to Sun for a little while. The
regular Serverworks chipsets will not be any different than any other
chipset for Opteron, supporting upto 8 processors.
Click to expand...

I'm not optimistic about Sun making much out of that opportunity - doesn't
feel right to me.
Plus with the Newisys Horus announcement, there seems to be some level
of competition to see who finishes first with a super-chipset, so they
probably don't want any details leaking out about their progress.

As for the old Serverworks principals, I wonder if they left because
they were not pleased with the deterioration of their relationship
with Intel under Broadcom? It was obvious that this was going to
happen if they got involved with Broadcom, considering
Broadcom/Intel's history. They were probably just looking for the
quick, big payout without considering the future of their company
first. Oh well, despite the Intel relationship meltdown, they are
probably now well positioned to start a new life as an Opteron chipset
maker.
Click to expand...

The "difference" between the Serverworks guys and Broadcom's management was
unusually public - the accounts were quite blunt and made it sound rather
nasty - though of course details were never released. I also haven't been
able to find anything on Raju Vegesna which would indicate he has taken up
a new venture. I'd gotten the impression that he and a couple of others,
who also left, were the real driving force behind Serverwork's success.
Daytripper certainly didn't think much of the replacement - the curiously
named Dick... err... hut :-) - and AFAIK, he'd been working closely with
them on system development.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??
 
Nobody gets along with Intel. It puts Nvidia's decision to not even
bother with a Pentium chipset into some greater light. They knew they
wouldn't get along with Intel, so they didn't even bother with
negotiating a license with them, and never even tried to design
anything for them. Why bother when there are much more reasonable
partnering opportunities, like AMD?
Click to expand...

Well, Nvidia is kind of a loose cannon. It's hard to predict where
they might try to compete, in the long term. I doubt Intel wants to
help them any more than they have to, considering they might be
loading the gun of their executioner...
 
On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 16:46:34 -0500, George Macdonald
The "difference" between the Serverworks guys and Broadcom's management was
unusually public - the accounts were quite blunt and made it sound rather
nasty - though of course details were never released. I also haven't been
able to find anything on Raju Vegesna which would indicate he has taken up
a new venture. I'd gotten the impression that he and a couple of others,
who also left, were the real driving force behind Serverwork's success.
Daytripper certainly didn't think much of the replacement - the curiously
named Dick... err... hut :-) - and AFAIK, he'd been working closely with
them on system development.
Click to expand...

Last I heard Raju was involved in a new product development venture targeting
server management devices...

/daytripper
 
George Macdonald said:
I'm not optimistic about Sun making much out of that opportunity - doesn't
feel right to me.
Click to expand...

Well, they paid a couple of hundred million for that startup, Kelia,
and hired (re-hired?) its CEO who was a former Sun employee. It better
come up with something.
The "difference" between the Serverworks guys and Broadcom's management was
unusually public - the accounts were quite blunt and made it sound rather
nasty - though of course details were never released. I also haven't been
able to find anything on Raju Vegesna which would indicate he has taken up
a new venture. I'd gotten the impression that he and a couple of others,
who also left, were the real driving force behind Serverwork's success.
Daytripper certainly didn't think much of the replacement - the curiously
named Dick... err... hut :-) - and AFAIK, he'd been working closely with
them on system development.
Click to expand...

Well, all I ever heard of it was that some original Serverworkers were
leaving the company, at the very end of the situation. Never heard any
rumours or stuff at all about what all led up to it.

Yousuf Khan
 
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