On February 18th, 2014 Cisco announced support for the Intel? Xeon? Processor E7 v2 product family on the Cisco Unified Computing System? (Cisco UCS?). Cisco has designed three new servers based on these new Intel processors: the Cisco UCS B460 M4, UCS B260 M4, and UCS C460 M4 servers. For additional information on the new servers please check the blog New Cisco UCS Servers: Redefining Scale Up, Scale Up and Scale Out.

On the same day as the Intel announcement, Cisco capturedsix world recordson industry benchmarks on Cisco UCS to highlight the way in which Cisco UCS canaccelerate performanceacross the data center. As we know, there is no better way to compare performance than by using industry-standard benchmarks, and with SIX new world record benchmark performance results Cisco has demonstrated Cisco Unified Computing System'soutstanding performance and IT productivityacross key data center workloads. Check out the Performance Brief for additional information on the six new Cisco UCS world record benchmarks. The detailed benchmark disclosure reports are available here. The performance leadership across a wide range of workloads provided by Cisco UCS is validated by the six World records announced this week which include:

• VMware? VMmark? 2.5.1 Benchmark (Virtualization and Cloud Performance)- Number-one 2-socket 2-node result
• SPECint?_rate_base2006 Benchmark (general CPU performance) -Number-one 2-socket server result
• SPECfp^?_rate_base2006 Benchmark (general CPU performance)- Number-one 2-socket server result
• SPEComp?G_base2012  Benchmark (parallel computing performance)- Number-one 2-socket server result
• SPECint^?_rate_base2006 Benchmark (general CPU performance)- Number-one 4-socket server result
• SPEComp^?G_base2012 Benchmark (parallel computing performance)- Number-one 4-socket server result

It is interesting to note that although all vendors have access to same Intel processors, only Cisco UCS unleashes their power to deliverhigh performance to applicationsthrough the power of unification. The unique, fabric-centric architecture of Cisco UCS integrates the Intel Xeon processors into a system with a better balance of resources that brings processor power to life. Cisco's results demonstrate the degree to which Cisco servers deliver the power of the new Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family. Cisco UCS maximizes Intel innovations and as a result Cisco UCS with the Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family deliveredup to 122 percent better performance over the prior generation of Intel Xeon processors,as shown in the graph below:

Cisco UCS delivers versatility with performance leadership across a wide range of workloads, enabling customers to eliminate infrastructure silos historically driven by unique application needs. Todd Brannon sums up thecustomer benefits and business advantagesdelivered by Cisco UCS in his blog post New UCS Servers deliver innovative scaling options and record-breaking power.

So the momentum continues...In five short years, the Cisco UCS has captured over 90 world records for performance and IT productivity taking its place among the most trusted server vendors on the market. Check out the Cisco UCS 90 World-Record Performance Results.

The architectural advantages of a single cohesive system optimized for virtualized environments coupled with the industry leading benchmark performance results  makes the Cisco Unified Computing System an "infrastructure platform of choice" to provide industry-leading performance in your data center. For additional information on Cisco UCS and Cisco UCS solutions please visit Cisco Unified Computing & Servers web page.

 Competitive claims based on results posted at http://www.spec.org/, http://www.vmmark.com/and at http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/servers-unified-computing/industry_benchmarks.html as of 02/18/2014. SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp and SPEComp are trademarks or registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. VMware VMmark is a product of VMware, Inc.