"Sun's Intel Xeon-based products are seeing strong customer adoption and stellar product reviews", stated Lisa Sieker, vice president, Systems Marketing, Sun Microsystems. "Today we're adding new value for customers with Intel's next-generation six-core Xeon chips in our high-density, highly scalable, energy-efficient systems. We also continue to work with Intel to optimize Solaris for Xeon processors."

Sun Fire X4450 and Sun Blade X6450 server customers will have the option of deploying Solaris 10 10/08, the latest update to the Solaris 10 OS. Through the collaboration between Sun and Intel, Solaris 10 10/08 features new capabilities including performance and energy efficiency enhancements, specifically optimized for Intel's new Xeon processor 7400 series. Solaris offers excellent performance and scalability on Xeon processors and is the ideal OS to deploy on hardware powered by the new Intel Xeon processor 7400 series. Solaris 10 10/08 users can also select Solaris ZFS as their root file system and take advantage of a number of key virtualization enhancements enabling them to better consolidate and maximize data centre efficiency. Solaris 10 10/08 is scheduled to be available in mid-October.

The Sun Blade X6450 server module is an ideal fit for virtualization and server consolidation, HPC, database and enterprise applications, designed for deployment within a wide range of solutions. Supporting the six-core Intel Xeon 7400 series processor, the Sun Blade X6450 server module has 50 percent more memory capacity than competing blade servers, making it an excellent solution for memory-intensive applications.

Additional key features include:

• Performance Boost: Sun Blade X6450 server modules provide up to 11 TFLOPs of peak performance per fully populated Sun Blade 6048 chassis, giving 1,152 cores per rack and up to 71 percent more compute power than competing blade servers. The Sun Blade X6450 server has four built-in PCIe I/O connections that enable high-speed system interconnects required for solving customers' many complex computing problems.
• More Memory: With 24 memory DIMM slots, the Sun Blade X6450 provides 50% more memory capacity than competing HP BL680c, HP BL685c, IBM LS41 and IBM LS42 blade servers. This feature allows customers to process more loads, support more virtual machines per Sun's blade and simplify overall system management.

The Sun Fire X4450 server is the industry's first and only four-socket (24-way) x64 2U server among top-tier vendors and the most scalable x64 server for data centre virtualization. Ideal for consolidating workloads, the Sun Fire X4450 server saves customers datacenter space, as well as energy and cooling costs.

Other key features include:

• Lower power consumption: The new Intel Xeon processor 7400 series consumes up to 33 percent less watts per core than the previous generation processor.
• Higher scalability: Packaged in half the form factor of comparable servers, the Sun Fire X4450 server is highly optimized for data centre consolidation, providing capital equipment cost reductions and increased data centre efficiency. When combined with the new Intel Xeon processor with six processing cores, the Sun Fire X4450 server provides greater virtualization and energy efficiencies.

Increased processing capacities offered by the new generation of Intel Xeon processor 7400 series allow the Sun Fire X4450 server and the Sun Blade X6450 server module to reach new performance heights on divergent workloads ranging from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to Java technology-implemented encryption and encoding algorithms.

Today, Sun is announcing the following record-breaking results:

• x86 world record on SPECjbb2005 benchmark with a single Java Virtual Machine (JVM) running Solaris 10 OS on a Sun Fire X4450 server: This result complements the multi-JVM 4 processor record on the same platform, recently announced at IDF, and highlights the well-rounded performance implementation of the Java HotSpot (version 1.6.0_06 Performance Release) software.
• World record 4-processor result for UNIX on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark, as of September 12, 2008. The Sun Fire X4450 server with four Intel Xeon processor X7460 (24 cores, 24 threads) that was running the SAP ERP application Release 6.0 with Unicode software and MaxDB 7.6 database on top of the Solaris 10 OS, was able to support 4,600 SAP SD Benchmark users. This benchmark result highlights the optimal performance of SAP ERP on Sun Fire servers running the Solaris OS and the seamless multilingual support available for systems running SAP applications.

Customers can maximize performance of both the Sun Blade X6450 and Sun Fire X4450 servers with virtualization, data centre efficiency, and support services from Sun. These services help ensure the servers are running efficiently and cost-effectively. Sun offers an array of services to reduce costs and maximize efficiency, including heterogeneous support, eco and virtualization services and training.