Sun Microsystems continued its tradition of quarterly new product blitzes by unveiling more than 25 new servers on Tuesday.
The servers run the gamut from models based on the company's long-delayed UltraSPARC 4 processor to others based on AMD's Opteron processors, said Steve Campbell, vice president of marketing for the company's enterprise systems products.
The new UltraSPARC 4 processors are essentially two of Sun's UltraSPARC 3 processors wrapped together in a single chip. They offer double the performance of the UltraSPARC 3 processor and are capable of handling applications written for multithreading processing, Campbell said. They are available in 1.05GHz and 1.2GHz speeds, he said.
Like the UltraSPARC 3 processors, four UltraSPARC 4s come installed on a Sun UniBoard. The UltraSPARC 4 UniBoards can be "mixed and managed" with UltraSPARC 3 UniBoards in both new servers and previously installed servers, with each processor operating at its native speed regardless of how many different processors are in the server, Campbell said.
This mix-and-manage approach is aimed at protecting customers' investments in their server infrastructure, Campbell said. "Customers can upgrade old servers in the field, or add new UniBoards to empty slots for additional power," he said. "Or if a customer has an UltraSPARC 4 server, they can add an UltraSPARC 3 UniBoard if they want. Now they can mix and manage different generations in the same system running either Solaris 8 or Solaris 9."
Discover the benefits of scalable backbone and network services for application and cloud providers.
Network automation is gaining momentum. Here's how you can drive this powerful technology to its full potential.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
