Sun and Fujitsu have added an entry-level single processor Sparc station to the M series of systems.

The M3000 runs a single quad-core Sparc64 VII processor and the Solaris 10 operating system. The companies said it offers twice the performance of four-processor systems for half the energy use.

“We call it a start small, grow big system,” said Shannon Elwell, director of Sparc Enterprise at Sun Microsystems.

“It’s about customers having a system that allows them to scale from one CPU to 64 CPUs within one single family.”

The blade system consists of two rack units and weighs 22kg. It has been designed to run quietly, at around 47db, making it particularly attractive to small companies that do not have a dedicated server room.

The company said it has gone to considerable pains to make redundancy part of the system. If one processor core fails then the processor will not have to be replaced, and the same goes for the fan system, it said.

The system costs $15,000 for a single processor and 4GB of memory.