Dell Intros 96-Core PowerEdge C6145 2U Server

Dell has announced the introduction of a new 2U server optimized for HPC applications, called the PowerEdge C6145, which can feature as much as 96 processing cores, by using AMD's Opteron 6100 series CPUs, and up to 1TB of RAM memory.

The server is specifically designed be used for video rendering, virtualization, and Electronic Design Automation (EDA), workloads which demand massive computational power such as large core count, high memory density, and massive I/O expansion.

In addition to delivering great performance, Dell has also optimized its server to be as energy efficient as possible and has paired AMD's processors with Samsung low-power memory modules as well as with a wide assortment of power saving technologies.

“Organizations have been steadily migrating business critical applications to x86 servers, and they are the IT backbone of many data center operations today,” states Matthew Eastwood, group vice president of IDC’s Enterprise Platform Group.

“Dell offers a wide range of servers to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.

“This is about enabling customers to build out agile server infrastructures that empower IT managers to be more strategic in the way they allocate and provide IT resources for a wide variety of workloads in the datacenter,” concluded Mr. Eastwood.

The best part about the new PowerEdge C6145 is that the server is compatible with AMD's future Interlagos chips which are based on the high-performance Bulldozer architecture and can pack as much as 16 processing cores.

These will become available in the third quarter of this year.

Users who want to build a GPGPU solution based on the PowerEdge C6145 can opt for the C410X external chassis which can be attached to the server to add up to 32 graphics processors.

The C6145's price starts at $18,000 US and the server will become available at the end of February in 20 countries including the U.S., Canada, Germany, the U.K. and France.