Sun has boosted the performance of its one-processor Sun Fire V100 server and dual-processor Sun Fire 280R system.
The V100 is a rack-mount system targeted at handling lower-end tasks such as e-mail serving and Web hosting, while the bulkier 280R crunches data for e-commerce and other business applications.
Both servers fit into the low end of Sun's line where the company has enjoyed some success during a difficult climate for hardware makers, said Laura Finkelstein, group marketing manager for Sun's low-end Sparc/Solaris servers.
The Sun Fire V100 will now ship with either a 550MHz or 650MHz UltraSPARC IIi processor, boosting performance by up to 30% over previous systems based on a 500MHz IIe chip, Finkelstein said.
The new server starts at $995 (£640) with a 550MHz chip, 256Mbytes of memory and a 40Gbyte hard disk, running the Solaris operating system.
The Sun Fire 280R also shows a performance increase over previous models, with a 900MHz UltraSPARC III chip swapped for new 1.015GHz chips. The server ships with a variety of software bundled at no extra cost, including the Sun One Application Server and the Sun One Studio 4 development tool. With two processors, 2Gbytes of memory and two 36Gbyte hard disks, the 280R, is priced at $19,995 (£12,875), Finkelstein said.
Sun's low-end server line has been a bright spot for the vendor during a dismal year for hardware companies. Despite heavy pressure from vendors such as Dell Computer, IBM and Hewlett-Packard, Sun has been able to gain ground in the single-processor server market.
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