The CMS-4U, the first offering from the Cupertino, Calif.-based company, has a 7-inch-tall chassis and holds 12 Intel dual-Xeon servers. One rack can support up to 240 Xeon processors. Most mainstream blade companies, such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems, offer systems that are smaller or larger than 3Up's product.
The system comes with built-in gigabit Ethernet and 10-gigabit Ethernet capabilities.
"Having the combined skills of switching, servers and systems management will be important as servers, networking and storage converge," Wu-Fu Chen, 3Up's chairman, said in a statement.
Blade servers sit side by side in a chassis, just like books on a bookshelf. The chassis typically includes components such as power supplies and external network connections shared by the blades.
Analysts expect blade servers to take over much of the market of today's standalone servers. In 2003, IBM was the top blade-server seller, with $202 million in revenue, according to market researcher IDC.
Shipment of the CMS-4U is expected to begin in the third quarter. Prices will be announced at that time, the company said.
