Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu are expected to unveil a new line of server systems today that deliver a major performance improvement by exploiting a multi-brained Sun chip.

Sun was previously selling servers that use two of the Sun UltraSparc T2 chips. But the new machines are based on four, each of which has the core circuitry of eight microprocessors. Sun said each of those engines, in turn, can simultaneously carry out as many as eight threads.

As a result, a four-chip server can carry out 256 threads at once, John Fowler, an executive vice president in charge of Sun's systems business, told the Wall Street Journal.

The new systems' price starts at $45,000. X