MIDDLEWARE

By Steve Fisher, Editor In Chief -- This morning Sun Microsystems released a slew of new products including the Sun Blade 2000, which is being touted as the world’s fastest workstation. To get the details on this new system, Supercomputing Online spoke with Phil Dunn, Product Line Manager, Workstation Graphics Products, Sun Microsystems. SCO: Please provide a technical description of the new Sun Blade 2000 including pricing details. DUNN: The Sun Blade 2000 20th anniversary workstations are Sun's new high end workstations designed for compute and graphically intensive users who require high-performance, multiprocessing capabilities, high-end 3D graphics, and large amounts of expansion capacity. The Sun Blade 2000 workstation shares many of the high end features of the Sun Blade 1000 workstation, including dual modular CPU's, the 4.8GB/sec bandwidth Sun FirePlane cross bar interconnect, high throughput Fibre Channel drives, dual UPA slots for high performance 2D and 3D graphics, up to 8GB of system RAM, 4 x 64-bit PCI slots, USB, 1394 and legacy I/O connections plus new features like the new UltraSPARC III Cu processors available in 900MHz and 1.05GHz, the latest release of Solaris 8 along with support for Sun's new high end Sun XVR-1000 graphics accelerator. Sun is also announcing a limited edition, Sun Blade(tm) 2000 20th Anniversary Celebration Workstation represents the ultimate level of performance and showcases Sun's 20 years of innovation with leading edge technologies. The Sun Blade 2000 Celebration Edition Workstation comes fully loaded with dual 1.05-GHz UltraSPARC III Cu CPUs, along with the new Sun XVR-1000 graphics accelerator, 8 GB of RAM, dual 73 GB of FC-AL storage, Sun 1394 visual collaboration kit and the SunPCi(tm) IIpro coprocessor card. The new Sun Blade 2000 systems come in the following 6 configurations: Sun Blade 2000 "Performance" Configurations 900 Cu MHz, PGX 64, 1GB RAM, 73GB HD -- List:$ 10,995 900 Cu MHz, Expert3D-lite, 1GB,73GB,Pci-IIPro -- List: $11,995 2x900 Cu MHz, PGX64, 2GB RAM, 73GB HD -- List: $15,995 Sun Blade 2000 "Personal Visualization System" Configurations: 900 Cu MHz, XVR-1000, 2GB RAM, 73GB HD -- List: $14,995 2x900 Cu MHz, XVR-1000, 4GB RAM, 73GB HD -- List: $22,995 Sun Blade 2000 20 Year Anniversary Celebration Edition (1.05GHz) 2x1.05GHz, XVR-1000 Graphics Accelerator,8GB RAM,2x73GB,DVD, Sun PCiII-Pro, 1394 Visual Collaboration Kit -- List: $34,995 SCO: What markets will you be pursuing with this product and why is it well-suited to those markets? DUNN: The Sun Blade 2000 will be targeted at the technical markets that demand high compute power and have strenuous data workloads. These markets include: * Electronic design automation (EDA) * Government/Defense * Manufacturing (MCAD/MCAE) * Scientific Research/R&D * Financial Modeling, * Management & Support. Sun Blade 2000 Personal Visualization configurations will address several markets of opportunity where not only high compute demands are needed but also demanding visualization capabilities are required. These markets include: * Earth resources/GIS (Oil&Gas) * Government/Defense/Classified Defense * Scientific Research and development * Visualization * Virtual Prototyping * Bio/Chem infomatics * MCAE SCO: Please expand on the SPECfp results mentioned in the backgrounder. DUNN: On November 20th, Sun announced publicly its outstanding benchmarks for the new 1.05-GHz UltraSPARC-III Cu processor, which is featured in the Sun Blade 2000 20th Anniversary celebration edition system. Sun published a peak SPECint2000 rating of 610 and a peak SPECfp2000 rating of 827. Both are outstanding benchmarks and the SPECfp2000 value is currently the highest of any workstation processor to date. Sun Blade 2000 1.05-GHz sets the record for floating point performance with an unprecedented workstation score of 827. It is 132 percent faster than SGI's new 600MHz Octane2, 106 percent faster than IBM's newly announced 450 Mhz-based IntelliStation POWER 265, 63 percent faster than SGI's newly announced 600MHz-based Fuel Visual workstation, and 42% faster than the HP 750MHz-based J6700. Sun Blade 2000 900MHz delivers faster floating point performance than all its 64-bit competitors and is 70 percent faster than IBM's 450 Mhz-based Intellistation POWER 265. SCO: Why would customers choose Sun Blade 2000 over the offerings of other vendors? DUNN: Sun Blade 2000 is the world's highest performance workstation with the highest SPEC floating performance of any workstation (with 1.05 GHz). Sun is also bringing high-end graphics to the desktop with the industry's first Personal Visualization System, which offers 90% of the capabilities of an SGI Infinite Reality at one tenth the price. Sun provides a smooth transition from 32- to 64-bit computing; one workstation can support both 32 and 64-bit versions of the operating environment. In addition, the performance of the 32-bit applications is not compromised by 64-bit applications, or vice versa. The Sun Blade 2000 continues to deliver on Sun's promise of investment protection. Performance upgrades across the Sun Blade 1000/2000 product lines can be accomplished by simple CPU module upgrade swaps. SCO: In the backgrounder referenced above there is a blurb about Sun defining a new market category called "personal visualization." Please define this new category/concept for our readers. How would you respond to someone saying, "Hmmm. Great. Another buzz-phrase to remember." DUNN: Personal Visualization and the new Sun Blade 2000 Personal Visualization Systems bring reality class graphics to the desktop. By combining the high performance, 64-bit Sun Blade 2000 workstation with Sun's new XVR-1000 graphics accelerator, Sun is able to deliver image quality and visualization performance that was previously only found on systems many times the price. Sun Blade 2000 Personal Visualization Systems are targeted at compute and graphically demanding power-users located across the range of technical disciplines. These users need to visualize extremely complex data sets, analyze them and make time critical, accurate business decisions. SCO: Any early adopters you'd care to mention? If so, what's their feedback on Sun Blade been? DUNN: One of our customers, Shell, has said: "Sun Microsystems' product developments in graphics and visualization are very exciting to Shell and its new Sun XVR-1000 graphics accelerator and Sun Blade 2000 workstation deliver the next step in the high performance visualization arena," said Rob Leslie, Manager, Interpretation Applications, Shell. "The XVR-1000's precise volume rendoring and high geometry performance provides a new level of visualization capabilities on the desktop for Shell. In our industry, highly accurate data display is paramount, and Sun is providing the technology for high performance solutions at more affordable price points." SCO: Is there anything you'd like to add? DUNN: Sun is celebrating 20 years of innovation with several "Firsts" in the industry, continuing its strategy of delivering premier computing and visualization products to market. - The Sun Blade 2000 workstation is the world's highest performance workstation. - The Sun Blade 2000 workstation is the first 64-bit workstation with a 1-GHz+ processor. - The industry's first Personal Visualization System, bringing high-end graphics to the desktop - The first 24" LCD monitor to support 1920 x1200 @ 60 Hz by DVI (Digital) interface. This assures quality that only a digital interface can provide at this resoulution and is a perfact match for the XVR-1000.