IBM on Tuesday introduced a line of new servers that it claims deliver up to triple the performance of servers made by its major rivals -- HP and Sun.

The line of UNIX and Linux servers, power by IBM's Power5 chips, also sport micro-partitioning technology that lets each processor run different operating systems.

IBM said its new eServer p5 systems are the result of a large-scale, three-year research and development effort.

"The new eServer p5 systems shattered world records for select transaction processing, Web speed, Java performance and other business applications beyond expectations, in some cases beating HP's and Sun's performances by two and three times," IBM claims.

The company's eServer p5 line of products include the dual-processor eServer p5 520, the four-processor p5 550 and the 16-processor p5 570, with starting prices ranging from 12,920 US dollars to 28,659 US dollars.

IBM said the products will be available globally on Aug. 31.