Apple serves Xserve update

Apple announced a major update to the Xserve line on Tuesday with a rev of Intel processors, Using the new Nehalem Xeon processors, it puts increased power efficiency and a option for a solid-state hard drive in the hands of enterprise and educational customers. Speeds of the Nehalem processor have been clocked to 2.93GHz with an increase of memory bandwidth of up to 2.4 times the current standard. All of this is achieved with an 19% reduction in idle power use.

The option of a solid-state boot drive uses a fraction of the power of traditional hard disks. With increased data pipelines, it delivers data 48 times faster on average without occupying a drive bay

Currently, Xserve units ship with an unlimited client edition of Leopard Server, which offers support for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows at no extra cost to the client. The Xserve standard configuration carries a suggested retail price of $2,999 (System specs | Standard configuration).