Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu have jointly announced the availability of a new family of SPARC servers that are alleged to be able to process 128 simultaneous threads. More than that, the two companies announced important improvements in energy-consumption and space efficiency.

The newly-introduced offering is comprised of the CMT Sparc Enterprise T5140 and T5240 servers, built around Sun's Niagara processors, that sports eight cores with dual threads for a total of processing 64 threads per chip. The updated server architecture allows Sun to equip its servers with two Niagara processors, for no less than 128 threads per machine.

Both server models support out-of-the-box virtualization capabilities, also known as Solaris Containers and Logical Domains. According to Sun, the T5140 and T5240 servers can consolidate existing server infrastructures, but they are especially suitable for running Java services and databases as well as for bridging ERP and CRM applications over the web.

The processor manufacturer also claims that the newly-released models will be able to compete on the same market segment as two- and four-socket x86 servers produced and sold by top-tier server vendors such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

"Ultimately, we've designed these systems to change the economics and scaling of enterprise and technical computing infrastructures," he said. "We've taken the performance and scalability you find with traditional mid-range servers and blended that with the third generation of our multi-threading technology."

The new server line-up is already available for purchase. The T5140 comes with a starting price of $14,995, while the T5240 sports an initial price tag of $17,995. However, the price difference is explained by the fact that the T5240 offering is able to work with 128GB of memory, while the T5140 can only hold 64 GB of system RAM.