Serengeti upgrade bad news for some

Sun Microsystems has launched its Serengeti server line based on the 64-bit UltraSPARC III chip. The new midframes feature a 750Mhz version of the copper-based UltraSPARC III, the most advanced Sun chip to date.

The processor supports 8Mb of on-chip memory controllers for large caches, 4Gb of system memory and can scale from eight to 24 Sun Fire enterprise servers.

The first systems based on the chip were launched last September after much delay. At the time, analysts predicted further delays before users could get their hands on the powerful servers.

"The new machines should provide better performance at the midrange level compared with Sun's existing product line," said Tony Iams, an analyst at New York-based DH Brown Associates. The existing midrange servers go from the eight-processor Sun Enterprise 3500 to the 30-processor Sun Enterprise 6500.

But the bad news for existing customers is that the UltraSPARC III chips in the Serengeti line only support Sun's Solaris 8 operating system, so anyone running older versions of Solaris will have to upgrade.

While the Serengeti line pushes Sun one step ahead of Intel, which hopes to deliver systems based on its 64-bit Itanium chip later this year, industry analysts are concerned about the availability of the UltraSPARC III processors.

A recent message from Merrill Lynch, for instance, noted that Sun still encountered volume issues five months after releasing the first products.

Despite this, Sun president Ed Zander said in a recent interview that the new servers were "long awaited". He claimed that Sun's latest line would be the "best server product line to support this whole internet infrastructure net economy build-out. The new UltraSPARC III servers are going to take the internet to the next level."

Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64, said that network managers must balance a desire for higher performance technology with the need to preserve investments in hardware and software infrastructures.

"UltraSPARC III can run second-generation UltraSPARC II software at full speed. This allows organisations to add UltraSPARC III-based systems to existing environments without compromising the integrity of the overall installation," he said.

The Serengeti line is expected to supersede all of Sun's midrange Unix servers. Sun's Enterprise-class E10000 servers will be replaced by another UltraSPARC III-powered server family, StarCat.

Adoption of Serengeti and StarCat is expected to be slow initially. Enterprises using UltraSPARC II chips in database configurations are expected to adopt a 'wait-and-see' attitude before upgrading to UltraSPARC III chips and Solaris 8. Some observers believe this is why Sun attacked the less conservative midrange market first.

Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group, said that workstations and server processors are different from their PC cousins. "In this market, clock speed is not important, only total system throughput," Gwennap said. "With its powerful CPU core and high-bandwidth system bus, the UltraSPARC III processor delivers the performance, scalability, and reliability needed by engineering and enterprise applications."