Sun Microsystems this week introduced the UltraSPARC III Cu 900 MHz CPU for the Sun Fire 3800, 4800, 4810, and 6800, its “Midframe” server branch of the Sun Fire family tree.
Continuing its full-frontal assault on IBM, Sun compared the souped-up performance now achievable by these servers to that of IBM’s p690 (AKA Regatta). Sun cited the SPECjbb2000 benchmark each server received. According to Sun, its Midframe servers (so named because of their capability to offer mainframe technology on a midrange server at a midrange price) performed 174,658 operations per second when tested, whereas the p690 system performed only 169,794.
Sun Microsystems this week introduced the UltraSPARC III Cu 900 MHz CPU for the Sun Fire 3800, 4800, 4810, and 6800, its “Midframe” server branch of the Sun Fire family tree.
Based on the benchmark configuration list prices, the 6800 exhibits 31 percent better price performance than the p690. The Sun server has a price performance of $6.37 operations per second compared to the p690 at $9.26 operations per second.
SPECjbb2000 (Java Business Benchmark) is Standard Performance Evaluation Corp.’s benchmark for evaluating server-side Java performance. It models a three-tier system, the most common type of server-side Java application. SPECjbb2000 focuses on business logic and object manipulation and the work of a middle-tier Java server workload. The workload benchmarked is a typical business-critical workload, and includes order-entry, inquiry, and payment processing applications.
Sun ran the benchmark on a 24-way Sun Fire 6800 server configuration with 900 MHz UltraSPARC III processors and 48 GB of memory running the Java 2 platform, Standard Edition, v1.3.1.
The new processors are copper-based and are currently being installed in only the Midframe servers, a Sun spokesperson told ServerWatch. All new 3800, 4800, 4810, and 6800 servers will ship with the chip preinstalled. Enterprises that have already purchased a Midframe server will need to upgrade if they wish to install the new chip.
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Amy Newman is a B2B technology writer and editor with more than 15 years of experience following and analyzing IT infrastructure trends. She co-authored "Practical Virtualization Solutions: Virtualization from the Trenches," published by Prentice Hall Pearson Education in 2009.
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