Sun Microsystems Inc will light out after Silicon Graphics Inc’s key graphics, imaging and high-end compute-intensive customer base next year with clustered system arrangements that string together large numbers of its low- and mid-range technical UltraSparc systems. Sun knows where it wants to get to but says it still has several hardware options under consideration including use of Fujitsu Ltd’s 200Mbps AP-Net Advanced Parallel System Network interconnect which the Japanese company uses to tie from four to 1,025 Ultra workstations and servers together as the AP3000 (CI No 2,879). Sun says it might otherwise use Thinking Machines Corp’s GlobalWorks parallelizing software, or technology it is developing in-house, although that shouldn’t be confused with the S3.MP serial link work or other stuff on which Jeff Rulifson’s team is working (CI No 2,942). The company will use the management, load balancing, scheduling and other tools being created for its new clustering arrangements (CI No 3,003) on the Silicon Graphics-beaters.
