IBM continues to expand its "cost-competitive" Unix portfolio with its lowest-priced offering to date, a sub-$4,000 eServer p5 system.

"This is our sixth Power5-based server under $10,000 we've introduced since last July," says Jeff Howard, manager of IBM's eServer pSeries. "We're now well positioned at the low-end space in a way we haven't been in some time with all the performance and flexibility that p5 systems bring to the table."

The p5-510 is offered in one-way and two-way versions with 1.65-GHz or 1.5-GHz Power5 processors.

"The two-way space is one of the largest segments of the Unix markets, and now we have a system that is specifically designed to go after the low end of Unix business against Sun" and Hewlett-Packard, Howard says.

The p5-510 is designed for small and medium businesses, which represents the largest revenue opportunity overall for Unix, Howard says. "We think the 510 is really right on for what those customers are looking for in terms of small form factor, easy to use, easy to install and manage, and easy to deploy," he says.

The p5-510 is being offered with a three-year warranty. The system is capable of leveraging IBM Virtualization Engine technology and Micro Partitioning capabilities to allow customers to support Unix and Linux applications simultaneously, he says.

The server is offered as a rack-mount system that supports AIX Unix versions 5.2 and 5.3, as well as Linux.

The p5-510 in either a one-way or two-way implementation with a 1.65-GHz Power5 and maximum memory of 32 Gbytes will be available beginning Feb. 18, as will a one-way version with a 1.5-GHz Power5. A two-way version with a 1.5-GHz Power5 will be available in April.

With a list price of $3,967, excluding operating system, the p5-510 has a 1.5-GHz Power5 processor and 512 Mbytes of memory.