Year-End review: 2013 what happened in the server field

For the past 2013, looking at servers and the entire data center area associated with them is an unusually dull year. The data center has never been more important to the strategic significance of corporate success, as it is today, and as a site that closely focuses on the development of servers and data center industries, year-end inventory is an essential task. In the following text, I will review the major events that occurred in the server industry in 2013.

Domestic super count wins global crown

June 17, 2013, the "Tianhe second" supercomputer, developed by the National Defense Science and Technology University, calculated at a peak rate of 54902.4 trillion times per second, Continuous calculation speed of 33862.7 trillion times per second double precision floating-point operations outstanding results in the United States and Japan, the world's top computer TOP500. The Tianhe second is one times faster than the second American Titan. From "Tianhe One" peak calculation speed of 4.7 petajoules times per second, to "Tianhe second" 549 million times per second, the realization from the petajoules secondary to billion secondary to a leap, "China speed" once again by the world to remember.

In terms of architecture, Tianhe second uses the self-developed network system and operating system, the network system uses the National defense Hkust independent research and development, based on the SPARC instruction set FT-1500 processor, operating system is China's independent development of Kirin operating system. Tianhe second has about 13,000 compute nodes, each using two Intel Xeon e5-2692 V2 CPUs and 3 Xeon Phi 31sp co-processor.

Domestic server brand first killed in the Chinese market top three

According to Gartner's first quarterly report, Huawei Server 2013 Q1 shipments to the top of the domestic x86 server, in the domestic server shipments exceeded HP for the first time, into the first three in the Chinese market. At the same time, became the first to enter the top three of the domestic server brand, and the only one into the Gartner Magic Quadrant (Magic Quadrant) of the domestic brand manufacturers, it also means that the traditional market structure of the server sector has been broken.

Figure 2:gartner Server Magic Quadrant (Photo source: Gartner)

Gartner's Magic Quadrant (Magic Quadrant) is a well-known graphical market vane in the IT industry, describing Gartner's analysis of vendors in the market on the basis of standards, and is widely recognized by the industry. But the server's leader Quadrant has long been dominated by IBM, HP, Dell and other international vendors.

In the statistics, the first quarter of 2013 shipments of servers in China are 330,674 units (data source Gartner, same below), Huawei in the first quarter of 2013 server shipments of 51643 units, in all China market rankings, more than the old server shipped HP, ranked third.

"Prism Gate" events stir the world

The Prism gate incident of June 2013 has aroused worldwide concern, and has a certain relationship with the State, enterprises and individuals. The US government network has invaded China for at least four years and hundreds of targets have been monitored by the United States, according to Edward Snowden, a former CIA analyst. There are about 13 root servers around the world 9 in the United States, all the Internet information through the root server is filtered every day, there are hidden dangers of cyber, the EU and other countries have proposed reform program, but the United States refused.

To control information security, domestic servers are the first step, "Prism door" event "can speed up the national key departments of network equipment" to go abroad "process, but also to look at the long-term, but it is undeniable that the international giants represented by Cisco in China's road is not so good to go, although the denial of the" Prism Gate "project, But Cisco feels the downside, especially in the Chinese market. November 14, Cisco released the first quarter of 2014 fiscal year earnings, lower than expected revenue, net profit significantly decline. By June this year, the Chinese market had contributed less than 5% of its revenue and profits to Cisco.

The server behind the "double 11"

In the promotion of Taobao, Singles festival successfully upgraded into a nationwide online shopping carnival. Alibaba as an example, as of November 12 0 o'clock, Alibaba sales breakthrough 35 billion, set a full new record. In the 2012 of the double Xi., Taobao and Jingdong server overwhelmed, to varying degrees of "paralysis." And in this year, in order to ensure the normal stability of the site visit, the electrical business enterprises have done enough homework.

Alibaba, for example, "Double 11" on the same day, Alibaba platform's transaction scale----1 minutes break through 100 million, 6 minutes break 1 billion, 128 minutes break 12.8 billion, 24 hours to complete the transaction 171 million, the completion of 790,000 per minute, even in the relatively low tide period, also reached 17 million people at the same time online. To ensure a 11 access, Alibaba engineers have mobilized 3 more than 60,000 servers in advance, including more than 20,000 new units, equivalent to 5% of China's annual sales of servers. To manage these server clusters, the server vendor also has a resident service. It is understood that at present this kind of resident server is more and more frequent, the manifestation is the server supplier participates in the User Data center's operation and the management.

The "Go IoE" craze.

In the field of IT procurement, "go to IOE" concept was fired hot, the so-called IOE is in the information system to remove IBM, Oracle, EMC three foreign IT giants products, "go to the IOE" campaign in the field of server procurement performance is to use X86 architecture of the server to replace the minicomputer.

"Go to IoE" was originally launched by Alibaba in 2012, and on May 17, 2013 Alibaba last IBM small machine in Alipay, mark the complete "to minicomputer" and "to IoE" is feasible. However, it is understood that "go to IOE" has a higher technical threshold, Alibaba's "Go to IOE" campaign took 3 years, after 17,000 internal technicians to complete the effort.

Driven by Alibaba, a lot of "domestic server to replace imported minicomputer" case began to appear in some ancillary or peripheral projects, but related to finance, telecommunications, social security, public security and other institutions of the core business, minicomputer is still an irreplaceable position.

Dell Privatization

On the evening of February 5, 2013, Dell officially announced that Dell announced that it would be privatized with 22.4 billion dollars, the company's CEO and founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake (Silver) With a 13.65-dollar price per share, the total turnover reached 24.4 billion dollars. According to the agreement, Michael Dell in the form of cash plus equity repurchase, Silver Lake in cash form, and Microsoft will contribute 2 billion U.S. dollars.

Dell's 2013 Q4 earnings showed that PC revenues were down 24% year-on-year, with total revenues down 11% from a year earlier. In a letter to investors this June, he wrote: "Dell is facing unprecedented pressure in the PC market and, on the other hand, is facing a strong competitor in the enterprise-level market offering integrated integration solutions." At present, Dell's market share in software and services is less than 1%. So Dell needs a quick transition. "Michael Dayer wants to make a quick adjustment to the company without shareholder disruption, just like IBM did in the past, transforming into a company that delivers end-to-end solutions to business and industry customers."

Dell servers grew in the one or two quarter, and in the third quarter, sales figures for research agencies showed sales of 484607, down 14.1% from a year earlier. The drop led to a contraction of Dell's market share from 22% in the second quarter to 19.5%. The privatization of Dell has created a lot of uncertainties. This is the same as when HP talked about whether to sell the PC business a year or two ago.

Conclusion: This is the worst of times and the best of times. If you want to add a sentence, that is, "in the final analysis, it is worse than bad." ”