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AMD's Opteron processor was initially launched last September, but bugs meant that broad availability was delayed until April this year.

Three of the servers are entirely new, the Sun Fire X4140, X4240 and X4440, while five other have been upgraded to quad-core Opterons's, these being the Sun Fire X2200 M2, Sun Fire X4100 M2, Sun Fire X4200

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M2, Sun Fire X4600 M2 and Sun Blade X8440 servers.

For storage, the Sun Fire X4140 and Sun Fire X4240 can hold eight and 16 disk drives respectively, making them suitable for uses that require high I/O throughput.

In terms of density Sun claims that the Sun Fire X4440 and Sun Fire X4600 M2 servers both offer comparable memory capacity as competing systems, but in half the space. The company says that the Sun Fire X4440 server is the industry's only 4-socket x64 AMD Opteron server in a 2U form factor.

Meanwhile, for overall memory capacity Sun claims the Sun Fire X4600 M2 and Sun Blade X8440 servers offer the highest in the industry.

"Sun's new x64 systems with quad-core AMD Opteron processors offer customers increased performance, scalability and energy efficiency, and ultimately more value than similar servers on the market," says Lisa Sieker, vice president of marketing, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems.