Apple has announced that they have just released the Xserve, a 1U rack optimized server that has double the speed anything they've released on the market. In addition, the unit also has an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server Leopard.

The unit is being introduced to the market for US$ 2,999. However, prices can easily skyrocket depending on the components you decide to add in. Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Philip Schiller spoke about the latest addition to the Xserve family:

With the latest Intel processors and no client access licenses, Xserve offers unbeatable server performance and value for under $3,000. Xserve's power, storage and Leopard Server make it ideal for supporting Mac clients and mixed platform workgroups.

The Xserve can be configured with up to two 3.0 GHz , 12MB of L2 cache, Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 processors. It also sports high-bandwidth hardware architecture with its dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses. 

The system can have up to 32GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory. When maxed out, this means a 64 percent increase in memory throughout according to the data provided by the benchmarking software of Apple.

In terms of expansion slots, the system has two PCI Express 2.0 which can support multi-channel 4Gb Fibre channels and 10Gb Ethernet cards. Interestingly enough, this is said to be able to provide up to four times the I/O bandwidth than previous Apple servers.

As with the rest of the system, server storage is also pretty sweet. Xserve has three drive bays  which can hold either a 73GB, 300GB SAS drive or an 80GB, 1TB SATA drive. That's a pretty solid assortment of choices for most servers out now.