Sun Microsystems officials are boasting of record performances from a new
server powered by six-core Opteron chips from Advanced Micro Devices.
Sun announced Dec. 8 that its Sun Fire X4640 system, which can run up to
eight of the six-core "Istanbul" Opteron processors, outperformed
rival systems on two benchmarks, the Two-Tier SAP
Sales and Distribution Standard Application Benchmark and SPECompL2001.
Sun officials said the tests were done using both enterprise and technical
applications.
The server, which can hold 24 to 48 processing cores, offers 65 percent
better performance than the previous generation Sun Fire X4600M2 system. The
X4640 supports Solaris, Windows and Linux operating systems, as well as several
virtualization technologies, including Sun's own Solaris Containers,
Microsoft's Hyper-V and VMware. The 4U (7-inch) system offers up to one-half
terabyte of memory in 64 memory slots, according to Sun.
For more information on the benchmarks, click here.
Sun's server news comes at a difficult time for its hardware business. The
company is awaiting word on its proposed
$7.4 billion acquisition by Oracle, a deal that is in a holding pattern
while European regulators address antitrust concerns surrounding the MySQL
database technology.
But even before that holdup, there were questions throughout the industry
about the future of Sun's hardware business once the company is absorbed by
Oracle, doubts that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison
has been vocal in trying to alleviate. Ellison
has said on several occasions that he intends to not only keep Sun's
hardware business—including the servers and the SPARC processor technology—but
to invest in it.
The deal's delay and the nagging questions around its hardware business have
left Sun vulnerable to rivals such as IBM
and Hewlett-Packard,
which have been aggressively courting Sun customers since Oracle first
announced its intentions in April.
Sun's server business, already struggling before Oracle's announcement, has
been hit hard, according to analyst companies Gartner and IDC.
In a report on the third quarter released Nov. 30, Gartner numbers showed
that Sun's business has suffered more than those of the other top five
OEMs—Dell, HP, IBM and Fujitsu.
Overall, worldwide server revenue dropped 15.5 percent in the third quarter compared
with the same period in 2008, while Sun's fell 32.3 percent. Overall global
server shipments dropped 17.1 percent, while Sun's declined 38.1 percent.
IT & Network Infrastructure News & Reviews 
