Sun Microsystems is looking to round out its server portfolio with new systems based on Intel processors and designed for high-performance computing and back-office applications such as databases.

At the start of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco Aug. 19, Sun will introduce a pair of servers that use Intel Xeon processors from the 5200 and 5400 series. After signing an agreement with Intel in 2007, Sun has slowly begun to push more systems into the market that use Xeon processors to help round out its offerings, which included its own SPARC chips and processors from Advanced Micro Devices. Sun now has a total of eight systems based on Intel processors.

The two new Intel-based Sun systems include the Sun Fire X2250, which is geared toward the HPC field, and the Sun Fire X4250, which Sun describes as a back-end server that can handle significant workloads such as database applications. Of the two systems, the Sun Fire X2250 is more important to Sun's overall business as the company looks to offer more hardware that can handle HPC, which in turn can support cloud computing infrastructures, Web 2.0 applications and financial services workloads.

While Sun for years used AMD's Opteron processors for its line of servers based on x86 microarchitecture, Brian Huynh, a Sun product manager, said Intel has made some significant strides in improving its Xeon processors to handle floating point calculations and has also increased the capabilities of its chips' front side bus to handle HPC workloads.