Sun Overhauls Workstations, Cuts Prices.

By William Fellows

Sun Microsystems Inc is upgrading its workstation line to better compete against Windows and NT and Unix vendors by adding higher speed CPUs cutting tags on systems and graphics hardware. It's a customary six-month overhaul. In the volume space the low-end Ultra 5 is now available with the 360MHz UltraSparc IIi - it previously used the 270MHz part - from $2,500. The Ultra 10 now uses a 440MHz part - up from 360MHz - and for the first time is available with Sun's high-end Elite 3D m6 graphics accelerator price at $7,500. With m3 graphics it costs $6,200. The existing 360MHz m3 model costs $8,000.

The UltraSparc IIi, with on-board PCI I/O is not yet available for use in multiprocessor system designs. Sun says there are issues to do with trading off on system design to do with I/O and backup. However it is working on an SMP UltraSparc IIi design which will likely come in for the Ultra 10. At the high end Sun has added the 450MHz UltraSparc II CPU to the two-way Ultra 60, which carries off-board PCI I/O priced from $13,000. It performs 19.7 SPECint95 and 27 SPECfp95. The 'legacy' Sbus-based Ultra 2 uniprocessor now sports a 400MHz UltraSparc II and costs from $13,275.

On the graphics front, Sun has dumped the four-year-old 2D Creator graphics accelerator and will maintain only the 3D version. And in the run-up, we suppose, to a new generation of graphics solutions, Sun has cut the price of its newer Ultra Port Architecture-based Elite graphics accelerators which are available on the UPA workstations; Ultra 10, Ultra 2 and Ultra 60. The m3 is now $2,000, down 41%, and the m6 $3,000, down 40%. Sun says it can't fit more than six floating point units on an Elite card; the m6 having six FPUs.