Sun intros new UltraSparc 4+ servers

Duncan Martell

SAN FRANCISCO: Sun Microsystems Inc. overhauled part of its server computer line with new UltraSparc IV+ microprocessors, seeking to regain some ground lost in the high-end server market to rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co.

Sun said that its new Sun Fire V490, V890, E2900, E4900 and E6900 servers are powered by UltraSparc IV+ processors with a clock speed of 1.5 gigahertz and run Sun's latest version of its Unix operating system, Solaris 10. The servers will also run earlier versions of Solaris.

The servers should help fill a gap until high-end servers arrive on the market in 2006 and are the result of a collaboration between Sun and Fujitsu, analysts said. Those servers have been dubbed the APL line, short for Advanced Product Line.

"This sort of fills in a gap until the APL systems become available," said analyst Gordan Haff of market research firm Illuminata. "It's a good upgrade for people who are already in the Sparc-Solaris camp."

Sun's servers using the Sparc chip only run on Solaris. The chip that will power the APL line is based on Fujitsu's Sparc64 VI chip.

Despite calls by analysts after the implosion of the dot-com and telecommunications investment bubbles in late 2000 that hurt Sun more than its rivals, the company continued to invest aggressively in research and development. That investment is paying off, Sun's Chief Executive, Scott McNealy said in a telephone interview.

"We kind of listened to our own drummer," McNealy said. These are three-to-five-year investments and we're putting the whole story together the best we know how."

Among the markets hit worst in the down-turn were telecommunications and financial servers, two key markets for Sun, whose servers were also extremely popular among Internet start-ups during the dot-com boom.

Haff said that UltraSparc IV+ machines could help it compete more effectively against machines from rival International Business Machines Corp. that use IBM's top-of-the line Power5 processor. But the performance of the Sun machines using the UltraSparc IV+ chip may be surpassed by IBM's faster Power5+ that is slated for release later in 2005.

"There is an IBM Power5 upgrade coming as well," Haff said.

Sun also has in development its line of chips code-named Niagara that will have eight processing cores able to handle eight threads, or instruction sets, simultaneously. Servers using the Niagara processors are due out in early 2006 or perhaps earlier, Sun has said.

"That really is going to be an attempt to change the playing field, at least for a certain class of systems," Haff said of the forthcoming Niagara chips.

Sun's UltraSparc chips, in addition to competing against IBM's servers using the Power chip, also compete against Intel Corp.'s Itanium processor, which is backed by Itanium's co-developer HP.

Sun's UltraSparc IV+ servers come after the Santa Clara, California-based company last week introduced new industry-standard servers that it said will more than triple the amount of the computer server market it can address.

Those servers, named X2100, X4100 and X4200 use Opteron microprocessors - the brains of personal computers - from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel's chief rival in the microprocessor business.

Industry-standard servers, also known as x86 servers, are those that use either Intel, AMD or Intel-compatible chips as their data processing engines.

Those industry-standard servers from Sun can run either Solaris 10, Microsoft Corp.'s Windows or commercial versions of the Linux operating systems.

The new servers are available and prices start at about $31,000, Sun said.