Penguin Computing, an AMD Platinum Solution Provider, has announced its new Altus 1600 and 2600 servers with up to two of the Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors. Supporting Next-Generation AMD Opteron 2000 Series processors, the new line of Altus Linux servers provides greater efficiency and compute power and faster memory on an AMD processor-based platform. The Altus family is designed to provide both high performance computing (HPC) and enterprise customers increased productivity and lower total cost of ownership even for the most compute-intensive applications.

"As customers are increasingly under pressure to do more with less, server technology that combines the latest AMD performance and efficiency-enhancing technologies with proven Linux expertise and support is an absolute requirement," said Pauline Nist, senior vice president, product development and management, Penguin Computing. "In addition to the excellent value in hardware that these new Altus products offer, customers are also selecting us as a long-term partner based on the total value we provide. Our customers rely on the complete Penguin package: our innovative, painless purchase process, turnkey ability to pre-load and pre-test whole racks and easy access to expert Linux support."

Available now, Penguin's 1U Altus 1600 and 2U Altus 2600 servers feature SATA, SCSI and SAS storage options to suit a variety of storage needs, expansion slots for PCI Express serial input/output technology to accommodate high performance cluster fabrics and enterprise-class storage adapters, and optional PCI-X slots for legacy expansion cards.

New processor features, including AMD Virtualization, allow customers to increase productivity. This advancement adds CPU level support to enable low overhead context transfers between virtual machine instances, resulting in a reduction in the complexity of third party virtualization software and reduced overhead. It also enforces memory partitioning between virtual machines for improved security. This results in enhanced capabilities and stability of software virtualization technologies, which enables greater server utilization as well as power and space savings through efficient server consolidation. The new 64-bit Altus servers include integrated support for IPMI 2.0, for secure remote management, eliminating the need for external management devices and reducing costs for initial and on-going server administration. They also offer optional hot-swap capability for hard drive replacement while the system remains in operation.

The new Altus line also incorporates many enhancements to increase efficiency, including up to 24 GB of DDR2 memory to ensure a reliable 24/7 duty cycle. This type of memory module increases performance, requires less power than pervious generations of DDR memory and allows customers to build large RAM configurations at lower total cost. In addition, the optional redundant power supply of the Altus chassis enables high AC/DC conversion efficiency. This type of power efficiency is beneficial since it results in lower utility bills and reduced data center cooling requirements.

Both Altus product families offer the latest memory technology, up to 24 GB of fully buffered dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs) for lower latency and higher throughput and error correction features, to ensure reliable operation and data integrity at full bus speeds. In addition, they provide 2 x 1 MB level 2 cache memory and a HyperTransport bus for data transfer. All Altus servers support Red Hat Linux and SuSE Linux operating systems.