SC06 Sun Microsystems has birthed a smaller blade server chassis meant to appease the high performance computing crowd.

The Sun Blade 8000 P takes up 14 standard rack units, as compared to the existing 19U Sun Blade 8000. The smaller size means that customers can pack three of the systems in a full rack and reach 1.2 Tflops of total performance. The wee chassis still holds 10 four-socket Opteron-based servers just like its big brother.

Thankfully, customers don't have to make too many tradeoffs by going with the more compact kit. Each server that slots into the chassis has 6 PCI-Express slots, 16 DIMM slots and 6 hot swap power supplies. You can find all the specs here.

While you can order the system now, Sun won't actually begin shipping product until February. Shortly thereafter, Sun should begin shipping a Niagara-based blade that fits into the same chassis. As reported first here, that blade has been dubbed the Sun Blade T6300.

Sun has largely missed out on the rise of the blade server after having failed in its first attempt to crack the market. IBM and HP are the clear blade server leaders.

Sun, however, has enjoyed some recent high performance computing success thanks to its Opteron-based gear, and the new smaller chassis should prove attractive to this demanding set of customers. ®