The rack-based HP ProLiant DL580 G5 server and the HP ProLiant BL680c G5, HP's first four processor (4P) quad-core server blade, offer increased performance with double the number of processor cores. In addition, the DL580 G5 has double the memory capacity of its predecessor. These enhancements offer customers more compute power and memory to improve the performance of the applications that run their business.

"HP has a long history of bringing innovative server platforms to market on time", stated James Mouton, senior vice president and general manager, Industry Standard Servers, HP. "These systems allow customers to meet their rapidly growing virtualization and energy-efficiency needs."

The HP ProLiant DL580 G5 is a 4P-based server ideal for virtualization and mission-critical data centre deployments. The processor performance and large memory capacity of the DL580 G5 can help improve staff productivity through fewer, yet more powerful, servers to manage with better performing applications.

The HP ProLiant BL680c G5 is also built for performance by using up to four Intel 7300 series processors and has a large memory capacity for data-intensive applications. The BL680c G5 is part of the HP BladeSystem portfolio, which was specifically designed for virtualization, energy-efficiency and ease of deployment and management.

"Using Intel Xeon 7300 series quad-core processors, HP ProLiant servers are delivering unprecedented performance and energy efficiency", stated Tom Kilroy, vice president and general manager, Digital Enterprise Group, Intel Corporation. "The new four socket, quad-core Xeon processor systems will provide 16 cores that enable HP to provide customers with superior levels of scalability, virtualization performance and improve their ability to run mission-critical applications."

To further meet virtualization and power-efficiency requirements, both servers include the following management software tools:

• HP Insight Power Manager enables customers to cap power at specific wattages to increase the number of servers in racks or blade chassis while lowering overall costs; and,
• The HP ProLiant Essentials Virtual Machine Management Pack (VMM) provides central management and control of both physical server resources and virtual machines, eliminating the need for separate VMM consoles.

HP also announced a joint commitment with Microsoft to define a data warehouse reference platform with the upcoming Microsoft SQL Server 2008 based on the ProLiant DL580 G5 with HP StorageWorks 50 Modular Smart Arrays. The platform is designed to help businesses mitigate risk and deploy their SQL Server 2008 data warehousing solutions with confidence and predictable results.

In on-line transaction processing, the HP ProLiant DL580 G5 using the Intel Xeon 7300 processor delivers the world's fastest industry-standard server performance with a record-breaking TPC-C benchmark of 407,079 tpmC @ $1.71/tpmC. This result is faster than IBM's recent Power6 System p570 at less than half the cost.

Also, in a recent two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark, results released on September 3, 2007, show that the quad-core HP ProLiant BL680c G5 server blade with four processors (4 processors/16 cores/16 threads) supported 3,500 SAP SD Benchmark users at 1.97 seconds average dialogue response time while achieving 17,550 SAPS, 351,000 fully processed order line items per hour and 1,053,000 dialogue steps per hour. CPU utilization was balanced across the processors at 99 percent on the central server, while average database request time (dia/upd) was 37ms/22ms.