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In January, Sun and Intel announced a broad strategic alliance that includes joint engineering, design and marketing with the scope spanning Sun Solaris* operating system (OS), Java*, and Intel® Xeon® processors and other enterprise-class technologies from Intel and Sun. Sun announced plans to deliver a comprehensive set of Intel® architecture-based systems, with plans for single-, dual-, and multi-processor-based enterprise servers, telecommunication servers, and workstations supporting Solaris, Microsoft Windows*, and Linux*.
Delivering on those plans, Sun has introduced three systems to begin the creation of Sun's family of Intel architecture based systems.
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Sun Fire* X4450 – A 2U rack, four-socket system based on the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 7300 series. This is the Sun enterprise-class data center compute engine for maximum flexibility, maximum efficiency, and maximum performance–ideal for virtualization and open databases.
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Sun Fire X4150 – A 1U rack, dual-socket system based on the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series. This Sun system provides the new standard of versatility to provide maximum performance, expandability, and manageability.
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Sun Blade* X6250 – The Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor in the Sun Blade X6250 adds a range of performance and cost options to the Sun Blade 6000 chassis. With eight separate processing threads per module and ten modules per 10RU chassis, it packs real compute density.
These Sun systems provide broad operating system support from Sun Solaris, Microsoft Windows, RedHat, and Novell.
Solaris* OS optimized for Intel Xeon processors
Intel has endorsed Solaris as a mainstream operating system. Solaris is the enterprise class, mission-critical UNIX* OS for Intel Xeon processor-based servers. These enhancements to Solaris include the following:
- Efficient power management
- Enhanced hardware feature support
- Increased system supportability
- Improved hardware specific operability
In addition, Intel and Sun will collaborate on the rapid adoption of key enterprise-class technologies for Sun's Intel Xeon processor-based systems. These include: Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)¹, Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology (Intel® I/OAT), and Intel® demand-based switching with the Solaris operating system. Sun is continuing to work with Intel to develop improvements in managed runtime Java beyond the 20 percent Sun JVM* announced at Sun JavaOne* in May 2007.
As Intel continues to put advanced functionality and features into our Intel Xeon processors, the combination of these powerful features along with the Solaris OS technologies will allow new levels of system performance.
Learn more
Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz discuss the strategic alliance
Intel® processor technologies
Podcasts
¹ Intel Virtualization Technology requires a computer system with a processor, chipset, BIOS, virtual machine monitor (VMM) and applications enabled for virtualization technology. Functionality, performance or other virtualization technology benefits will vary depending on hardware and software configurations. Virtualization technology-enabled BIOS and VMM applications are currently in development.