Dell, however, did have a number of comparisons for the new R905 server, which is a four-core Opteron version of the existing four-socket R900. We're told the R905 offers the "ultimate in 4 socket virtualization performance" by beating HP's ProLiant DL580 by 23 per cent on VMmark testing and knocking IBM's x3850 by 8 per cent and Sun's X4450 by 16 per cent on the same benchmark. You can see the results here where you'll note that Dell is the only vendor on the latest update to ESX 3.5. Without the update, Dell's Xeon-based R900 ties Sun and trails IBM.

Take a look at the DL785 - it is a big 7U rack machine (the prefix 7 is for the height in U, for instance the 4-socket DL585 is 5U or 8.5+ inches high). The modular board system, not unlike the one pioneered in the old AlphaServer ES40 a decade ago, manages to squeeze all the CPUs and a LOT of memory in there: each processor has eight DDR2 DIMM sockets, each with up to an 8GB DIMM in there. Multiply 8 x 8 x 8 and you get a 512 GB maximum memory capacity, so large it can even hold many animal and plant complete genomes right in memory - the only machine in this class to pack that much RAM.

Northland Securities analyst Chad Bennett raised his rating to "Outperform" from "Market Perform" and kept a $9 price target. The target implies he expects the stock to rise about 42 percent over Friday's $6.35 close. Bennett said news from AMD that it will begin shipping a type of core semiconductor gives him "increasing comfort" on chip supply.

The unit runs the SSD Linux operating system, which straps NetBSD userland functions onto the Linux kernel. Okay, okay. We'll grant you that the system limps along on a single 400MHz (AMD/Raza) Alchemy MIPS chip. But we're after something spectacular and unique here. So, why not ignore the chip and embrace a box that reflects an entire cultural ethos? "The OpenMicroServer has what we like to think of as very ‘Japanese characteristics,'" said Tomoyasu Suzuki, president of Plat'Home. "It doesn't stand out, and it doesn't complain. It just gets the job done. This 4th generation product - selling since 2001 - fits small and large companies that need reliability. Tuck it in the server room, set it up, and you can depend on it to keep doing its job."