Sun Microsystems Inc’s microelectronics unit believes it is one of the first big companies to enter the market for embedded board computers based on the CompactPCI bus standard (CI No 2,833), with the launch of two boards incorporating the company’s new 64-bit UltraSPARC IIi processor. The embedded boards are versions of the Darwin mother boards found in Sun’s low-cost workstations which we spotted several weeks ago (CI No 3,324). They are aimed at telecommunications companies and industrial applications that need high-powered, robust, highly available processors. Sun says the CompactPCI standard, an embedded version of the Peripheral Component Interface which was defined by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group a couple of years ago (CI No 2,833), has already been far more widely accepted than its predecessor VME, due to the take-up of PCI in the personal computer world, and the proliferation of low cost peripherals available around the processor. Sun says OEMs are moving higher up the food chain, and buying complete boards rather than simply buying in chips and making the boards themselves, and the company admits it is looking for new vehicles to shift its silicon. The company is offering the SPARCengine CP 1200, with its microSPARC IIep processor running at 100Mhz and 125Mhz, and the high-powered CP 1500 which starts with the 270Mhz UltraSPARC IIi used in Sun’s new Darwin server range (CI No 3,324). The CP1500 incorporates dual channel 100Mbit Ethernet and onboard Ultra-Wide SCSI. The company says it offers a lot of compute power in a very small form factor. Sun says the applications for these boards are more and more sophisticated and mission critical, and customers need a secure supply and support, which it says it can offer. The other major benefit to the telcos and industrial companies it says, is that many of these run their application development on Sun servers running Solaris. Applications for these, or for a telecoms switch with the new embedded boards are binary compatible, making development and deployment of embedded applications that much simpler. The CP 1200 is available now, and the CP 1500 will be sampling next month. The two will be formally launched next week at the Embedded Systems Show in Stuttgart, Germany.
