Dell today updated 17 PowerEdge servers with new technology from AMD and Intel that provide businesses with a platform to accelerate the deployment of cloud computing infrastructures, more efficiently manage virtualized data centers, and consolidate mission-critical application workloads - all on an open x86 architecture.

Dell today also introduced the PowerEdge C6145, one of the highest performing servers on the market based on industry leading benchmarks.

Dell's new PowerEdge C6145 server is a number-crunching "power house" specifically designed to handle HPC applications, video rendering, virtualization, and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) workloads which demand massive computational power such as large core count, high memory density, and massive I/O expansion. Dell's customers can take advantage of up to two independent 4-socket server nodes in a 2U chassis with the latest AMD Opteron 6000 processors, which enables greater performance per node while reducing space, weight and consuming less energy. Further, customers can scale up to 96 cores, up to 1TB memory, and expanded I/O to quickly compile data and results, and connect to other resources.

In recent benchmarks the PowerEdge C6145 ranked as the highest performing x86 2U shared infrastructure server on the market based on SPECfp_rate2006 results. The PowerEdge C6145 is available starting at the end of the month.

Dell is also offering the new Intel Xeon 5600 series Westmere-EP processors across its entire line of two-socket PowerEdge servers, including blade servers (M610, M710, M610X and M710HD blades), rack servers (R710, R610, R510, R410, C1100, C2100, C6100) and tower servers (T710, T610, T410) with new Intel Xeon 5600 series processors. With the new Intel Xeon 5600-based series 4 and 6 core processors, Dell's customers experience up to a potential 33.9 percent boost on integer computing throughput over current Xeon 5600 processors, and can achieve as much as a 67 percent gain in performance compared to Dell PowerEdge servers with the previous generation of Intel Xeon 5500 series processor. In addition, using the new Intel Xeon 5600 series Westmere-EP processors, Dell PowerEdge servers have gained the top benchmark scores in both SPECint_base2006 and SPECfp_base2006, industry-standard measures of integer and floating point performance.

Dell also offers the latest AMD Opteron 6000 processors with its PowerEdge R715 and R815 servers as well as the PowerEdge C6145. With these new AMD processors, users can expect to see better overall system performance increases of up to eight percent and greater energy efficiency compared to a Dell AMD PowerEdge server with a previous generation AMD Opteron processor.