Sun shows off 16-core Barcelona server

Well, what did we tell you? Right on schedule, Sun has revealed a server running on 16 Opteron Cores (that's four Quad-Core Opteron "Barcelona" chips, mind you) that's built on a compact 2U chassis. The four-socket server also packs dual TCP-offloading-enabled gigabit NIC cards, redundant power supplies, support for RAID up to level 6 and 32 DIMM slots for up to a whopping 256 GBs of RAM. How did they cram all of that into a 2U case? Half of the memory and CPUs are stacked on top of the other half--making for a striking internal design. "So far, no other Server vendor has attempted to squeeze this many goodies in to a 2U chassis," ZDnet's George Ou said.

Apparently, Sun expects that innovative server designs such as these will help the company gain traction in the x86 server market. At the AMD launch event, Sun CEO Jonathan Swartz announced the company's intention to "take over 4th place in the x86 Server Market"--not too shabby for a company that's only been at it for two years. 

For more on the new servers:
- see this ZDnet article