Sun Microsystems speeds up its low-end Sun Fire V100 server with the addition of 550 MHz and 650 MHz UltraSPARC III processors and revs up the Sun Fire 280R by adding a 1.015 GHz UltraSPARC III processor.

by Amy Newman Server Watch Managing Editor [September 13, 2002]

Sun Microsystems this week announced it has souped up its low-end Sun Fire V100 server with the addition of 550 MHz and 650 MHz UltraSPARC IIi processors. It has also sped up the Sun Fire 280R by adding a 1.015 GHz UltraSPARC III processor.

According to Sun, with the UltraSPARC IIi processor the Sun Fire V100 server is capable of delivering performance up to 30 percent faster than previously. It also offers twice the Level 2 cache and an entry configuration with double the memory.

Sun has also doubled the V100's cache size to 512 KB and increased memory capacity to 256 KB.

The Sun Fire 280R, with its new speed bump, is capable of performing up to 17 percent faster than the current crop of 280Rs, which have a 900 MHz processor.

The Sun Fire V100 server is a uniprocessor, 1U plug-and-play system priced starting at $995. It comes preloaded with Web server software, such as the Sun ONE Web server, the Sun ONE Active Server Pages and Apache HTTP Server. The V100 also features Lights Out Management and a System Configuration Card for easy system installation and management. It comes standard with the Solaris 8 Operating Environment but is also licensed for Solaris 9.

The Sun Fire 280R (left) server features up to two high-performance UltraSPARC III Cu processors, Sun's Fireplane Interconnect that runs at a maximum of 4.8 GB/s; redundant, front-accessible power supplies and Fibre Channel disk drives; and Remote System Control. The server features two 1.015 GHz processors, 2 GB of memory, two 36 GB 10K RPM FC-AL drives, redundant power supplies, DVD-ROM and Remote System Control. It carries a list price of $19,995.

In addition to its increased speed, the Sun Fire 280R system will come bundled with Sun ONE Application Server 7, Platform Edition and the Sun ONE Studio 4 development tool, Community Edition and Mobile Edition pre-installed starting early next quarter. Sun has also pre-installed Solaris 8 with Apache Web Server software and has introduced a special bundle for secure Web services with the Sun Crypto Accelerator 1000 Secure Socket Layer encryption card.

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