The Middle East operations of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced the fastest blade server on the planet. Posting three new performance world records, the Sun Blade X8420 server module set a new standard for 4-socket servers, especially when combined with the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), the most advanced operating system on the planet.
"Datacenters across the Middle East are looking for ways to save operating expenses, but they also need to stay up to speed with the latest and greatest technology to deliver the highest performance levels. We see the new Sun Blade X8420 as the ideal server solution for industry sectors such as telecommunications and financial services, which are experiencing record growth in the region," said Iain Jardin, Technical Sales Architect for Sun Microsystems, MENA.
“The ‘world’s fastest blade server – the Sun Blade X8420 – will also provide Middle East businesses with increased virtualization capabilities, which enable them to utilize servers to a higher capacity,” he added. From firsthand customer experience in the region, Sun’s Jardin estimates that organizations are only currently using about 15-20% of their server capacity.
The new Sun Blade X8420 server module provide customers with the fastest, most up-to-date and flexible datacenters for years to come. As the only blade systems designed specifically to run resource-intensive enterprise business and technical applications, the Sun Blade 8000 modular systems are the first blade servers available to support the highest-performing AMD Opteron processors with industry-leading x86 performance-per-watt.
Sun Blade X8420: Fastest Blade Server on the Planet
The Sun Blade X8420 server module, powered by Next-Generation AMD Opteron 8000 series processors, is the only blade server to offer 4-socket dual-core 2.8GHz processors and extremely versatile I/O that delivers up to 16 times the throughput of competing 4-socket blade and rackmount servers. These features allowed the Sun Blade X8420 server module to shine on a variety of industry-standard benchmarks and set an 8-thread world record on SPEC OMPM2001 suite, making it the fastest blade server on the planet. The new record result easily surpasses the competing IBM System p5 550 and HP ProLiant DL585 scores by 16% and 29%, respectively. Furthermore, the Sun Blade X8420 server module posted two x86 world records on both floating point and integer-intensive suites of SPEC CPU2006 benchmark. For more details, please visit: http://www.sun.com/servers/blades/8000/benchmarks.jsp
Availability and Pricing
The Sun Blade X8420 server module is will be available in the Middle East within the first half of 2007.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Blade, Solaris and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. AMD and AMD Opteron are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
SPEC, SPECint, SPCfp, SPEComp registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 01/05/07. Sun's results were submitted for review. Sun Blade X8420 (4xAMD Opteron model 8220, 8 cores, 4 chips, 2 cores/chip, 8 threads, Solaris10): SPECompM2001 –23224; IBM System p5 550 (POWER5+, 4 cores, 2 chips, 2 cores/chip, 8 threads, AIX5L V5.3): SPECompM2001 – 19,983; HP ProLiant DL585 (4xAMD Opteron model 880, 8 cores, 4 chips, 2 cores/chip, 8 threads, RedHat EL AS): SPECompM2001 – 17948. Sun Blade X8420 (4xAMD Opteron model 8220, 8 cores, 4 chips, 2 cores/chip, 8 threads, SLES 9): SPECint_rate2006 –93.1. Sun Blade X8420 (4xAMD Opteron model 8220, 8 cores, 4 chips, 2 cores/chip, 8 threads, Solaris10): SPECfp_rate2006 – 87.3.
