Sun Microsystems is now the latest vendor to use Advanced Micro Devices" quad-core Opteron chips in its rack-mount server and blade portfolios. Sun is offering eight systems that take advantage of the quad-core Opteron processors formerly code-named Barcelona. The one blade and seven rack-mount systems that are being released May 13 are part of Sun"s x64 (x86, 64-bit) line of servers.
The launch includes four rack-mount systems and one blade—the Sun Blade x8440—that have been upgraded to support both dual- and quad-core Opteron processors, along with three systems—the Sun Fire x4140, x4240 and the x4440—that are new to the company"s system portfolio. Sun now joins Hewlett-Packard and Dell, the other top-tier vendors offering commercial systems built around AMD"s Opteron chip, which suffered from a series of delays related to a design flaw in the silicon that the chip maker disclosed in late 2007. However, Sun did complete its new supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in February using an older version of the quad-core Opteron chip.