Two new Ultrasparc IV Solaris servers are using chip
multi-threading technology to double application throughput in the
same physical server footprint as previous models, Sun said at its
quarterly launch.
The Sun Fire V490 and Sun Fire V890 can house up to eight
processors, and are priced from under £28,000. According to Sun,
the Sun Fire V890 is half the price of a similar HP system and 20%
cheaper than IBM's P570 server.
In a bid to grab some of the Linux limelight, Sun also released AMD
Opteron-based systems, capable of running Red Hat Linux, SuSE
Linux, or Microsoft Windows. The new models are the Sun Fire V40z
server, Sun Java Workstation W1100z and Sun Java Workstation
W2100z.
Although Sun has a partnership with Red Hat, Schwartz made it clear
Sun's priority is its Solaris operating system, and that it saw Red
Hat as a competitor.
To prove the point, version 10 of Sun's Solaris operating system
for x86 servers, expected by the end of the year, is due to have a
feature that will allow Linux applications to run directly on
Solaris.