Sun Microsystems pushes the release of its second blade server design a few months back than early scheduled. The thin system based on an Athlon processor will be released by year-end.

When Sun annouced its blade servers in February, it said the Intel processor-compatible system would arrive "midyear," according to Ashley Eikenberry, group manager of blades product marketing. At a meeting with reporters Friday, Sun gave itself more leeway.

"We're on track to deliver this year," said Colin Fowles, director of entry servers for Sun's Volume System Products group, on Friday. The Intel-compatible systems are being tested at customer sites, he added.

Blade servers, systems that slide into a single chassis like books into a bookshelf, figure prominently in plans from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computer and Intel. Sun's first blade system, which lets 16 blades with the company's own UltraSparc IIe processor fit into a 5.25-inch-tall chassis, is shipping.

Sun already has experienced a blade schedule slip, as have IBM and Dell. But the significance of the delay is moderated by the fact that the market for blades is still young.

Sun's "x86" blade--named after the instruction set used by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices processors, will use AMD's Athlon XP-M processor running at 1.2GHz. It will be available running Linux or Sun's x86 version of its Solaris operating system.

By: DocMemory
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