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Quote:Sun Microsystems and IBM (NYSE: IBM) last week introduced specialized high-end server systems that provide fresh evidence of a new era in computing. The Sun machine -- an ultrafast video server designed by the company's cofounder, Andreas Bechtolsheim -- is potentially powerful enough to transmit different-standard video streams simultaneously to everyone watching TV in a city the size of New York.

In contrast, IBM's new video game server blends a mainframe computer with the company's Cell microprocessors, which sit at the heart of Sony's PlayStation 3 video game console. The result is a server system capable of permitting hundreds of thousands of computer users to interact in a three-dimensional simulated on-screen world described as a "metaverse."

The Sun and IBM machines will be priced at hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. However, their arrival indicates that the modern computing world is changing as computer designers hunt for ways to break out of the era of the "killer micros."...