Paul, any comments on the new Sun 64-bit chip "announcement". On the surface, it doesn't seem to catch Intel on the price/performance curve.
Sunday October 5 4:39 PM EDT
Sun Micro to unveil new generation processor
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 5 (Reuter) - Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) will unveil on Monday a
new generation of its Sparc processor chip with speeds that it said are up to three times faster than
Intel Corp.'s (INTC) top Pentium II processor.
The chip, the third generation of the Sparc family, which are the brain chips for Sun's workstation
computers and servers, will enable Sun to build even more powerful systems.
Sun said that the UltraSparc-III microprocessor will run at speeds of 600 megahertz, while the
fastest Intel Pentium II chip currently runs at 300 megahertz.
The UltraSparc-III chip is also ``scalable,'' which means that more chips can be added on to the
system, for multiple processing, which vastly increases computing speeds. Sun said with this new
chip, it could build a computer with over 1,000 processors, which would rival the fastest
supercomputers.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Sun said that with this processor, it will build servers for networked
computers and Internet applications. For example, Web sites hosted on a Sun server with the
UltraSparc-III can support more users and will run faster. The servers will also store huge amounts
of data.
Sun said it will begin to develop servers using the new processor in the middle of 1998, running its
Solaris operating system, Sun's version of the UNIX operating system.
``Sun is committed to the concept of moving toward a fat server,'' said Jeff O'Neal, SPARC
marketing manager, referring to servers that can store more and more data. ``The technical design
that's been done allows us to go to the next generation of fat servers.''
Sun's new chip, designed using a 64-bit architecture, comes 10 days before Intel and
Hewlett-Packard Co. are expected to disclose the first public details of their joint effort in
next-generation 64-bit chip architecture, code-named Merced, at a conference next week.
Intel has said that its Merced chip would be in use in computers around the end this century. |
