The servers deliver up to a 40 percent increase in performance compared to their predecessors, the company said. HP also highlighted new technologies such as the scalable memory buffer that expands memory to improve application performance. Separate, buffered memory chips can temporarily store data alongside the main memory, which could result in faster execution of in-memory applications. The feature could net power savings of up to 155 watts per 256GB of memory, HP said.

The new servers will be available in May 2011, except for the DL980, which will be available in June. Prices for the servers will start at $6,000, the company said.

IBM announced new System x3850 X5, x3690 X5, and BladeCenter HX5 servers, which provide up to 40 percent CPU performance improvement from the previous processor generation, the company said. An IBM spokesman said further information and pricing on the new servers would be released at a later date.

Cray announced that its CX1000-S would now include E7 processors. The configuration will include up to 128 cores and is designed to run high-performance computing applications, the company said. The server is priced under $100,000.

The E7 chips in the future will be pitted against the upcoming 16-core server chips code-named Interlagos from Advanced Micro Devices, Insight 64's Brookwood said. The Interlagos chips, based on the new Bulldozer architecture, will offer faster performance and energy saving features. AMD has said that the Interlagos chips will ship in the third quarter.