Sun & Fujitsu Unveil SPARC Enterprise Servers

New Quad-Core SPARC64-based servers increase performance, scalability, consolidation, and virtualization for HPC.

by DE Editors | Published July 21, 2008

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) and Fujitsu Limited (Tokyo, Japan) announced an enhanced line of SPARC Enterprise servers — M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 — that delivers a highly scalable, enterprise-class virtualization and consolidation platform with up to 80 percent better performance on commercial applications and 2x better performance on HPC workloads and using 44 percent less energy per core.

Based on the quad-core SPARC64 VII processor and the Solaris Operating System (OS), the new SPARC Enterprise servers are suitable platforms for high-availability, mission-critical enterprise applications. The new processor is also available as an option for seamless upgrades in existing SPARC Enterprise servers.

The SPARC Enterprise servers build on the existing systems co-designed by Sun and Fujitsu and extend long-term customer investment protection through binary compatibility, industry leading hardware and software partitioning and the ultra-flexible "mix and match" SPARC64 processor architecture.

With the addition of the new quad-core SPARC64 VII processor, the SPARC Enterprise servers also offer unmatched scalability in a single symmetric multi-processor system (SMP) system — from 16 to 256 cores. The SPARC64 VII processor also delivers the RAS functions of SPARC64 VI, including hardware instruction retry, dynamic degradation and parity-protected processor registers, to maintain the levels of performance and reliability needed in mission-critical systems.

The new processor consumes 44 percent less energy per core than the SPARC64 VI chip, enabling customers to consolidate and minimize energy consumption. Leveraging built-in hardware partitioning features and Solaris Containers, the new SPARC Enterprise servers form an ultra-high density environment that provides exceptional virtualization capabilities.

More information on the SPARC Enterprise server line is available from Sun or Fujitsu.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.

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