IBM describes a blade "as a thin computer system that can be pulled in and out of a specially designed chassis, similar to placing books into a shelf."
IBM, ranked No. 1 in the blade server market in '06 Q1, with a 40% +/- share of a market which totaled $2.2 billion in 2005. (Hewlett-Packard 35 % +/- and Dell 11% +/-.)
Market researcher IDC projects that the blade server market will grow to $10 billion by 2010.
Reuters reports that IBM has been working with venture capital firms to encourage them to fund start-up companies that rely on IBM blade hardware. IBM envisions hundreds of companies selling peripherals such as network and storage cards, communications switches and software.
IBM offers blades designed with a variety of processors including; Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron, IBM PowerPC®, and expected to be available in Q3 '06 the IBM Cell BE with nine cores (pictured).
IBM builds a variety of chassis housing for blades - a BladeCenter - holding as many as 14 blades.
IBM and Mercury Computer Systems Inc. have designed a dual Cell-Based Blade based on the Cell BE processor that uses Rambus Inc.'s extreme data rate (XDR) memory.
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