Azul Systems is rolling out a new generation of Java-crunching appliances armed with the ability to spread its workload across a total of 768 processing cores in a single box.

The new 7240 and 7280 models eat up 14U of rack space, and like their predecessors, are aimed at large businesses looking to offload demanding Java software workloads onto a separate box. The devices support Java and J2EE applications, freeing up data centers to work on other tasks.

A fully-loaded 7240 contains 384 processor cores, 385GB of memory and will need 1,835 Watts to operate. The 7280 has the capacity for 768 processor cores, 768GB memory and has a healthy 3,235 Watt appetite.

Both units run on the 48-core Vega 2 chip designed in-house by Azul. The company claims the devices deliver 5x to 50x greater scale and throughput improvements over general purpose servers. Azul, however, has been notoriously shy about presenting public benchmark figures to the press.

Azul's latest offering is the third generation of hardware released by the start-up. The company first appeared on the radar in 2005 when it released a Vega 1-based 96 core system.

Although list prices are only scarcely based on reality, the systems "start" at $49,995. That figure increases with the number of processors and the amount of memory. Both the 7240 and 7280 are available now. ®

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