Sun fulfils Fujitsu pact and stacks up server options

Co-developed APL line finally arrives as Sun looks forward to next Rock, Intel and AMD releases

Sun Microsystems has finally detailed the new generation of servers that have been co-developed with Fujitsu, but the Unix giant has more server plans up its sleeve.

The partnership was originally announced under the name Advanced Product Line (APL) back in 2004 with many observers regarding it as a way for Sun to relieve the cost burden of development.

The new line-up appears to be biased towards Fujitsu’s mainframe heritage with, at the high-end, RAS, hot-swappable RAM and processors, memory mirroring, and redundant hardware features. Both Sun and Fujitsu will offer the servers under the Sparc Enterprise brand. Mid-range and high-end models will use the Fujitsu-developed Sparc64 VI processor that the firms said offers about 50 percent faster speeds than current Sparc-based servers.

“It gives our customers the opportunity to support even bigger environments, and allows us to compete with IBM’s pSeries and Itanium-based systems,” said Paul Leonard, Sun datacentre marketing manager.

The Sparc Enterprise line is not the only server platform Sun is looking at. Systems based on AMD’s “Barcelona” four-core Opteron are due in August, while Sun’s first Intel-based systems are due to arrive later this year. Also, Sun’s much-vaunted multithreaded processor, codenamed Rock, is likely to be available in systems from late next year or early in 2009, Leonard said.

Separately, Sun is to show off its Project Blackbox in London next month. Blackbox packs a datacentre environment into a shipping container to give firms ad hoc access to server resources.

However, in a blog entry, Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff warned not to underestimate the appeal of the APL line.

“What is important is that the APL runs Solaris 10 and that applications will run unchanged,” Haff wrote. “That’s the sort of upgradability that’s non-negotiable.