Sun Microsystems Inc may be gearing up to introduce its UltraSparc I systems on November 7, but its Sparc Technology Business unit is already off on the UltraSparc II journey, estimating the part will deliver 350 to 420 SPECint92 and 550 to 660 SPECfp92 between 250MHz and 300MHz, when configured with 2Mb cache and up to 4Gbps of bandwidth. UltraSparc II has 5.4m transistors, includes the New-Media MPEG-2 and video conferencing technologies, and Visual Instruction Set. Texas Instruments Inc is fabricating the part in 0.35 micron 2.5V five-layer metal CMOS process. It will handle up to 16Mb of second level cache. Samples of the part are due first half next year, with production ships the second half. The Sparc unit says it is still looking at 1,000 SPECint92 and 1,500 SPECfp92 for UltraSparc III by the next millenium (CI No 2,749).