The processors are being designed for use in 16-socket servers. Athena's basic "building block," as Toyoki called it, will consist of four processors and 2TB of memory. Multiple building blocks can be assembled into configurations of up to 16 CPUs with 8TB of memory.

"We will be able to quickly grow a small system into a very large machine by adding more building blocks," Toyoki said.

The processor will feature some advanced processing capabilities, which Fujitsu describes as "software-on-chip" technologies that could speed the type of operations required by Oracle software. They include embedded decimal ALUs (Arithmetic Logic Units), and embedded encryption and decryption units to handle the latest encryption standards, namely AES, DES, 3DES, RSA and SHA.

The processor also borrows a methodology from the supercomputing space, namely the High Performance Computing Arithmetic Computational Extension (HPC-ACE), which provides a way of executing multiple instructions simultaneously, which should speed data fetching and compression and decompression speeds.

(IDG News Service reporter Chris Kanaracus contributed to this report.)