8 socket servers

Commodity and high volume are generic descriptions,
lets look at hard numbers.
a 4-socket system (with all 4 processor sockets populated) from Dell runs $12-15K
and I mean the high-end, Xeon 7140 or Opteron 8220.

An 8-way (2 4-way nodes) from the current vendors is $90K.
so I think there is a very good market opportunity for an 8-way at the $40-50K price point,
which gives you $10K cushion to absorb the extra costs of an 8-way platform

Doug Siebert (foo@bar.bar) on 5/23/07 wrote:
---------------------------
>Jose (no@teh.win) on 5/23/07 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>The trouble with "commodity" 8 socket servers is simply the sheer real estate involved.
>>You can't fit eight sockets on a conventional motherboard, so you're looking at
>>daughter cards... and already you've walked away from "commodity." Now, there are
>>ways it *could* go (HTX slots so standardized single- or dual-socket daughter cards
>>become a commodity of sorts) but the industry likes to go its own way until the
>>vendors finally realize (again) the benefits of standardization. And the 8 socket
>>market will be small (but lucrative) enough that that may never happen.
>
>
>I've always wondered....are there technical reasons why a double sided motherboard
>with sockets on both sides can't be done? That would seem a nice way to do a 3U
>8 socket server that fits in a standard rack.