Claiming it represents a significant breakthrough in server-based computing, IBM Corp. on Tuesday debuted its first Intel system based on its X3 architecture along with a customized chip set that supports up to 32 single- or dual-core Xeon chips.

The newly minted eServer xSeries 366, the first in a series of dual-core-capable Intel Corp. servers expected to ship over the coming year, has technical "hooks" built in to support IBM"s Virtualization Engine, making server consolidation easier. The system also runs 32- and 64-bit applications on the same platform, thereby allowing corporate users to migrate to a 64-bit environment gradually.

"What drove this effort was we could not find the reliability, performance, and scalability customers are asking us for in a commodity chip set. But by pooling our technical resources from IBM"s Research and Microelectronics divisions and the mainframe and high-end Unix groups, we have an architecture that can deliver those capabilities," said Tom Bradicich, CTO for IBM"s xSeries and BladeCenter servers.

Some industry analysts believe the chip set and X3 architecture are a technical breakthrough that potentially could both benefit corporate buyers as well as apply pressure to IBM"s server competitors, most notably Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc.

"This is big news for the x86 market because now there are fewer components doing more powerful work, which translates into lower costs and better workloads and, ultimately, hopefully consumers getting a better deal," said Vernon Turner, group vice president with IDC"s Enterprise Computing practice.

Whether or not the new technology results in IBM gaining significantly more market share on HP and Dell will largely depend on how successful IBM is in executing its market strategy for products based on X3, Turner cautioned.

In developing the chip set, IBM officials feel they have solved a long-standing problem of making industry-standard memory faster, which contributes to the system"s overall performance.

"A processor is like a three-piece suit, with the chip, which is Intel"s standard; the memory, which has standards from about 12 memory vendors; and the I/O. With Hurricane on X3 we have made each of these better because the chip set acts as glue and as an intercommunications mechanism among all three parts," Bradicich said.

The built-in hooks for virtualization provide support for present and future versions of both Linux and Windows, including Microsoft Corp."s long hyped Longhorn due in late 2006. Bradicich declined to say, however, what features built into the chip set would specifically support Longhorn.

"Microsoft has been very much in the loop on this. We have access to their (Longhorn) code and they have access to our earliest hardware. They have had this hardware for a while for tuning and certification purposes. Things like dual-core support have the roadmap for Longhorn in mind," Bradicich said.

The xSeries 366, to be broadly available in late March, will ship with four processors. But over the course of 2005 IBM plans to deliver other X3-based Xeon-based systems containing eight, 16, and 32 chips with either single or dual cores.

The Xeon chips in the upcoming system have EM64T memory addressing, which serves to leverage the marriage of the Hurricane chip set and Intel"s x86 latest processing capabilities. The combination of these technologies boosts overall system performance by 35 percent when a maximum of 64GB of memory is used.

The new chip set, code-named Hurricane, adheres to the PCIX 2.0 specification which offers significantly more bandwidth capacity than the PCI 1.0 standard, Bradicich said.

IBM officials said they plan to purposely price the system aggressively in order to increase its competitiveness in the enterprise applications market, particularly the database segment where IBM"s DB2 and Oracle Corp."s flag ship product go head to head.

Pricing will not be determined until the system is delivered in late March. Company officials said the system will arrive at the same time that Microsoft, Red Hat Inc., and Novell Inc. deliver their respective 64-bit Intel-based operating systems.