So HP have put 1000 cores in a rack ( with some serious cut backs ). Well thats great. Web 2.0 can keep growing nicely. Sun however, can put 336 cores in a rack. Yes, thats less, but its units of execution that count (i.e. threads) ( of course it all depends on your workload, but still, we’ll play the numbers game). So in these 336 cores, Sun pack 2688 threads. Using these t5240 machines, you ‘ll also get 2688GB of RAM. 42 DVD drives, 84 * 10Gb Ethernet interfaces. You also get on-cpu cryptographic acceleration for DES, 3DES, AES, RC4, SHA1, SHA256, MD5, RSA to 2048 key, ECC, CRC32. Nice. Oh, with HP, you get no storage. Not one bit. With the Sun configuration, you’ll get 336 * 146GB drives. Thats 49056GB of storage (49TB). Theres a Sun released white paper which explains more about how the new generation of T2 and T2+ chips work.
Working for Sun may change my views on hardware, but really these figures speak for themselves!