Sun Fire X4640 servers with six-core AMD Opteron processors have proven to increase performance per watt by up to 34% over previous generation quad-core AMD Opteron Processors, Sun reports, and up to 65 percent better in performance than the previous generation Sun Fire X4600 M2 server.

The Sun Fire X4640 server uses up to eight six-core AMD Opteron processors in 4RU. This Sun x64 server offers:

Compute

• Six-Core AMD Opteron Model 8431 (2.4 GHz, 6M L3, 75W) processors
• Six-Core AMD Opteron Model 8435 (2.6 GHz, 6M L3, 75W) processors
• Up to 64 DIMM slots (512GB max)

I/O

• 6x PCI-E slots (four x8, two x4), 2 PCI-X
• 4x 2.5 SAS disk drives
• 4x Gigabit Ethernet ports
• DVD

Availability

• Hot-swap disks
• Hardware RAID 0, 1
• Hot-swap redundant PSUs & fans

Management

• Sun Integrated Lights Out Management (ILOM) Service Processor
• Solaris, Linux, Windows, VMware

Performance

• Six cores provides better performance and power efficiency when running multi-threaded applications

• HyperTransport Technology Assist (HT Assist) improves the performance of the cache sensitive applications such as virtualization, database and HPC by reducing cache probe traffic between processors

• Coherent HyperTransport 3.0 Technology (cHT3) helps improve the overall system balance and provides better scalability by increasing the interconnect rate from 2 GT/s to a maximum of 4.8 GT/s between processors

Power Efficiency

• AMD CoolCore technology: Helps reduce energy consumption by enabling users to turn off the unused parts of the processor

• AMD Smart Fetch Technology: Helps reduce power consumption by allowing cores not being used to enter the "halt" state so that it can draw less power

• Dual Dynamic Power Management Technology: Enables better management of power by enabling each core and memory controller to be powered by a different power source so that they can be operated at different voltage levels

• Enhanced Power Now! Technology: Uses Independent Dynamic Core Technology to help reduce power consumption by enabling each core to vary its clock frequency so that they can operate at the clock frequency required by their applications

• Integrated DDR2 DRAM Memory Controller: Enables the use of low-power, energy efficient DDR2 memory. Also incorporates memory RAS to reduce system downtime and to increase system reliability.

Virtualization Improvements

• Rapid Virtualization Indexing and Tagged-TLB: Helps decrease latency, improve performance, and run more virtual machines on the system by allowing the translation of virtual to physical memory addresses in hardware instead of software

• Extended Migration: Allows higher availability by enabling the movement of a virtual machine between two servers running AMD Opteron processors on many virtualization software solutions.

End of Life for Sun Fire X4600 M2 Server Family

Sun announced that the Sun Fire X4600 M2 server family is being replaced by the Sun Fire X4640 product family. The last order date is March 12, 2010, with the last ship date scheduled for June 11, 2010.

More Information

Sun Fire X4640 Server Product Page

Datasheet

Sun's New x64 Server Sets New World Records

Sun Fire X4640 Sets Record on SPECompL2001

Six-Core AMD Opteron Processor - information from AMD Website

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