* Sun’s UltraSPARC IV+ processor
Sun last week unveiled the UltraSPARC IV+ processor, which the company says is two to five times faster than previous processors and can accommodate heavier workloads.
The UltraSPARC IV+ is contained in five Sun Fire servers – the V490, V890, E2900, E4900 and E6900. These servers are powered with 1.5-GHz processors and run the Solaris operating environment.
Chuck Sears, director of research computing for the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science (COAS) at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., is beta testing a Sun Fire V890 at COAS, where he is running scientific simulations and weather modeling.
“The UltraSPARC IV+ brings new life into the company,” Sears says. “The processors over the past few years have not been very efficient. With the UltraSPARC IV+ all our workflow processes can efficiently run on this architecture. Before I would require a whole rack of UltraSPARC 3 processors – now I just need a file cabinet-sized box.”
One of the most important features of the UltraSPARC IV+ servers is that previous-generation UltraSPARC 3 and UltraSPARC 4 processors can be intermixed in the same server, allowing upgrade protection.
“From an end-user perspective, mixing and matching processors and keeping the high efficiency is important. They can handle multiple threads so nothing stalls,” says Sears, who has Sun Fire V1280 servers, Sun Ray ultra-thin clients, a Sun Fire V440 and a Sun Fire E4900. He says he will upgrade to the V890.
Also, the processors can be swapped in and out on the fly without taking down processes that are running.
The UltraSPARC IV+ is five times as fast as the UltraSPARC 3 and two times as fast as the UltraSPARC IV.
The processors are positioned on a “uniboard,” which contains up to four processors and 32G bytes of memory.
All servers are available now. Pricing starts at $31,000.
