Sun sharpens up blade servers

Sun Microsystems has unveiled a four-socket blade server which the company claims is the "fastest on the planet". 

The Sun Blade X8420 server supports up to four dual-core 2.8GHz AMD Opteron processors and 8GB of memory. 

Sun claimed that the X8420 posted three world record SPEC benchmark scores, including a record score for the eight-core OMP2001 test designed to measure performance in multi-processor units. 

The server also came out top in the x86 category of the SPEC CPU2006 tests designed to measure the two types of computing functions commonly performed by processors.

Sun credits much of the performance gain to the I/O system, which carries data to and from the CPU, allowing for up to 16 times more throughput than other four-socket systems.

The company also rolled out the Sun Refresh Service aimed at keeping blade system hardware up to date by allowing companies to purchase the hardware on a subscription basis.

The customer purchases a blade system from Sun and can have the blade server modules replaced over a 42-month period with the newest models up to three times. After the subscription period ends, the customer keeps the server as-is.

Sun hopes that the service will encourage customers to purchase new blade systems without fear of the servers being made obsolete by faster, more efficient machines a few months later.

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