Sun Extends Xeon Server Family For HPC, Web 2.0

Posted on August 19th, 2008

Sun Microsystems has extended its family of Intel Xeon-based Sun Fire servers with two new offerings for High Performance Computing (HPC), Cloud/Web 2.0 and back office computing workloads, including a 1U server for HPC workloads and an expandable 2U enterprise-class system. The Sun Fire X2250 and Sun Fire X4250 servers, powered by one or two dual- or quad-core Intel Xeon processors 5200 or 5400 series, run a variety of operating systems, including Solaris 10, Linux and Windows.

“Sun’s Intel Xeon-based product line has proven to be wildly popular with customers. To keep up with demand, we are already announcing the seventh and eighth Xeon-based systems since our strategic alliance with Intel in 2007,” says Bob McGaughey, VP of product management for the Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. “Today we’re extending the value of the line by introducing fast, energy-efficient systems with larger memory footprints that scale to address the needs of our HPC and Web 2.0 customers.”

The Sun Fire X2250 server is a 1U server targeted at HPC workloads including energy and financial services, for which Sun cites the following attributes and comparisons:

* Power consumption: Featuring the low-power Intel Xeon Processor 5400 series, each processor dissipates a maximum of 50W of power, or 12.5W per core - 35% lower than standard 80W parts found on the IBM System X3450 server.
* Memory and I/O: The memory subsystem and Front Side Bus (FSB) bandwidth of the Sun Fire X2250 server are up to 20% faster than that of the Dell PowerEdge 1950, allowing HPC users to simulate more realistic, higher-resolution crash tests. In addition, the processing speed of the Sun Fire X2250 server using the Intel Xeon Processor L5420 (2.5GHz, 50W) is 133MHz faster than the fastest 50W processor found on the HP ProLiant DL160 G5 server.
* Performance: The Sun Fire X2250 server achieved record-breaking integer, floating point and integer throughput scores on the industry-standard SPEC CPU2006 benchmark, which measures the performance of the processor, memory and compiler on the tested system by executing a range of tasks and capturing the time it takes to complete each of them.

The Sun Fire X4250 server is an expandable 2U enterprise-class system powered by Xeon processors, designed for Web 2.0, back office and database applications, with strengths as specified by Sun as:

* Disk capacity: With 16 SAS disk drives, the Sun Fire X4250 server offers the highest disk count of any server of its kind.
* Memory: The Sun Fire X4250 server features the highest memory capacity of comparable servers, with up to 16 memory slots delivering 64 GB of fully buffered DDR2 memory.
* Expansion: The Sun Fire X4250 server supports six PCI Express slots, compared to three or four PCI Express slots supported on competitive servers by Dell, HP and IBM.