On May 11 at the SunWorld Expo Sun Microsystems Computer Corp is to complete its Enterprise Server family with the introduction of its scalable Common Open Systems Environment-compliant 1,500-user, eight-way Scorpion, now officially tagged the Sparcserver 1000, a mid-range multiprocessor. The departmental application server fits between Sun’s 500-user Sparcserver 10 and the high-end 3,000-user SparcCenter 2000. The Solaris 2.2-based system, whose profile resembles a deep dish or Chicago pizza box, expands to eight 50MHz SuperSparc+ processors and up to 2Gb of memory with 200M-bytes per second input-output bandwidth, 12 expansion slots, 100Gb disk capacity and built-in high-availability fault-resilient commercial features. It will be field-upgradable to next-generation Sparc microprocessors. List prices start at $36,700 for a uniprocessor with 32Mb and 1Gb disk going to $46,700 for a two-way with 64Mb and 2Gb disk or $75,700 for a four-way with 128Mb memory and 2Gb. The single-image 350-TPS maximum Sparcserver 1000 tops out at $110,000. Sun is expected to claim that the unit is a hot box, taking the number one position in benchmarks such as MIPS, Database TPC-A, Specint92 (could go to 9,000+), Specfp92, AIM III and Laddis. It will compete against Hewlett-Packard Co’s G, H and I series, IBM’s 570, 580 and 980 and Digital Equipment Corp’s Alpha 3500 AXP 4000 AXP. Sun will claim the Sparcserver 1000 sets a new standard for configured systems, comparing one of its fully configured four-ways at $76,500 to an HP H50 at $105,475, an IBM Corp 580 at $107,522 and a DEC 4000/620 AXP at $151,544. On upgradability. The Sparcserver 1000 is scalable and modular so upgrading from a base system to the high end is by simple addition and is $96,400 in upgrade charges. At Hewlett-Packard it would require a minimum three systems swaps and cost over $500,000. Sun has also bundled a one-year on-site warranty into the system to attract business users. It is going after manufacturing, retail, teleservices, decision support, information publishing and branch automation as well as its old standby, engineering, scientific and electronic design automation. Oracle7, Sybase, Ingres and Informix are said to have been tuned for the 1000.
