Sun Microsystems Inc’s hardware boss Ed Zander is apparently so pleased with the SuperServer kit picked up from Silicon Graphics Inc’s Cray Research Inc unit that he decided the long-awaited UltraSparc makeover of the one- to 64-way line, code-named Xfire, deserves its own ceremony. Sun had originally planned to tag delivery on to an Ultra Enterprise refresh or the clustering launch, but has delayed the launch to try and grab more attention. Sun reckons the UltraSparc Xfires will extend its current high-end, the 30-way E6000, by three to five times with over 10Gbps throughput. Xfire clusters using the Dolphin interconnect will support up to 1,024 processors.
