The Jalapeno UltraSparc-IIIi processor is a cut-down version of the Cheetah UltraSparc-III processor, the latter of which includes large cache memories and the electronics to support SMP clustering for big servers.
The Jalapeno server is aimed at entry machines with two or four processors where price and heat are issues. This chip debuted in April 2003 at 1GHz with 1MB of integrated L2 cache memory, 64KB of L1 data cache, and 32KB of L1 instruction cache, all wrapped around an UltraSparc-III core.
At the end of 2003, Sun boosted the clock speed of this chip to 1.3GHz, thanks to the improving yields with the 130 nanometer process used at Sun’s foundry, Texas Instruments. Next year, as Texas Instruments moves to a 90 nanometer process, Sun will launch the UltraSparc-IIIi+ chips, which will boost on-chip cache to 4MB and crank up the clocks on the Jalapenos considerably, perhaps to 2GHz or more.
But Sun still has to sell servers with the 1.3GHz and the new 1.6GHz Jalapenos until then. The 1.3GHz chip is still the default processor in the V440 machine, in fact, and the company is only selling the 1.6GHz chip in large configurations of the V440, with four of the processors installed, 16GB of main memory, and four 73GB SCSI disk drives.
Such a machine costs $33,995, a 29% premium compared with the same machine using the 1.3GHz Jalapenos. That’s pricey considering that the chip upgrade probably yields only about 20% more performance. Sun has not yet put the faster Jalapeno into the two-way Sun Fire V210, V240, or V250 servers, but it will probably do so as yields on the chip improve.
