14 DAY TRIAL // Sun just announced its latest blade server model, named 8000p. As this series is actually an extension to the 8000 line, the main changes refer to the density factor since you can introduce no less than 30 blade servers into a rack. The 8000 series could only reach 20 servers per rack. Each blade server can carry 4 AMD Opteron dual core CPUs and come with 16 memory banks capable of holding up to 64GB of Ram. 2.5" hard drives are supported.
If you want performance, this is product for you since a 30 blade server rack can accommodate 120 dual core CPUs, and you can be quite sure that they deliver. According to Sun, the peak performance of such an array is of 1.248 TFlops, with 3 racks capable of delivering enough flops to take a spot in Top 500.
As for pricing, it doesn't come cheap but it's worth it. The price tag is 7500 for the chassis and $14,600 for an 8-way server module and that's only for the server itself. Expect to pay additional dollars for storage capacity or extended memory.
Sun is getting quite aggressive on the server market. We don't quite know what is the reason behind this but what we do know is that they intent to manufacture all the equipment themselves using their own fabs. They say that by manufacturing the servers on their own facilities they have the advantage of taking less time and using less people. Sun also promises that such an idea will eventually cut prices in the maintenance sector.