History
Developers first placed complete microcomputers on cards and packaged them in standard 19-inch racks in the 1970s soon after the introduction of 8-bit microprocessors. This architecture operated in the industrial process control industry as an alternative to minicomputer control-systems. Early models stored programs in EPROM and were limited to a single function with a small realtime executive.
The VMEbus architecture (ca. 1981) defined a computer interface which included implementation of a board-level computer installed in a chassis backplane with multiple slots for pluggable boards to provide I/O, memory, or additional computing. The PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group PICMG developed a chassis/blade structure for the then emerging Peripheral Component Interconnect bus PCI which is called CompactPCI. Common among these chassis based computers was the fact that the entire chassis was a single system. While a chassis might include multiple computing elements to provide the desired level of performance and redundancy, there was always one board in charge, one master board coordinating the operation of the entire system.
PICMG expanded the CompactPCI specification with the use of standard Ethernet connectivity between boards across the backplane. The PICMG 2.16 CompactPCI Packet Switching Backplane specification was adopted in Sept 2001 (PICMG specifications). This provided the first open architecture for a multi-server chassis. PICMG followed with the larger and more feature-rich AdvancedTCA specification targeting the telecom industry's need for a high availability and dense computing platform with extended product life (10+ years). While AdvancedTCA system and boards typically sell for higher prices than blade servers, AdvancedTCA suppliers claim that low operating-expenses and total-cost-of-ownership can make AdvancedTCA-based solutions a cost-effective alternative for many building blocks of the next generation telecom network.
The first commercialized blade server architecture was invented by Christopher Hipp and David Kirkeby and their patent (US 6411506 ) was assigned to Houston-based RLX Technologies. RLX, which consisted of mostly former Compaq Computer Corp employees, including Hipp and Kirkeby, shipped its first commercial blade server in 2001 and was acquired by Hewlett Packard (HP) in 2005.
In February 2006, Blade.org was established to increase the number of blade platform solutions available for customers and to accelerate the process of bringing them to market. It is a collaborative organization and developer community focused on accelerating the development and adoption of IBM blade server platforms. It is no longer available.
The name blade server appeared when a card included the processor, memory, I/O and non-volatile program storage (flash memory or small hard disk(s)). This allowed manufacturers to package a complete server, with its operating system and applications, on a single card / board / blade. These blades could then operate independently within a common chassis, doing the work of multiple separate server boxes more efficiently. In addition to the most obvious benefit of this packaging (less space-consumption), additional efficiency benefits have become clear in power, cooling, management, and networking due to the pooling or sharing of common infrastructure to supports the entire chassis, rather than providing each of these on a per server box basis.
The research firm IDC identified the major players in the blade market as HP, IBM, Dell, and Cisco. Other companies selling blade servers include AVADirect, Oracle, Egenera, Supermicro, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Rackable (Hybrid Blade), Cirrascale and Intel.
Read more about this topic: Blade Server
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