The V1280, as we have been saying for months, is a twelve-way UltraSparc-III server that fits into a 12U form factor. There has been some speculation as to how this server would be made, but documents we have seen suggest that the V1280 is comprised of three four-way motherboards that use the UltraSparc-III+ processors. This means the V1280 does not use the same boards as the existing V480 and V880 servers, which are based on a two-way design. The documents suggest that the V1280 shares a lot of parts in common with the Sun Fire 4800, right down to the 900MHz UltraSparc-III+ processors with their 8MB of L2 cache. The Sun Fire V1280 will, as we have said, support up to 96GB of main memory and sports a much more compact design, 12U compared to the 17U of the Sun Fire 4800.
One of Sun’s own Web sites in Europe accidentally posted configuration and pricing information on the new machines, and then one of its resellers did it, too. We were lucky enough to see both. We cannot warrant the accuracy of this information, which is subject to change, but here it is. A base Sun Fire V1280 with four 900MHz processors, 8GB of main memory, and two 36GB disks will sell for 88,000 euros. An eight-way machine with 16GB of main memory and two disks showed a list price of 140,200 euros. A 12-way machine with 24GB of main memory and two disks listed for 192,500 euros. And a fully loaded machine with a dozen processors, 96GB of memory, and two disks had a list price of 302,500 euros. This pricing suggests that the V1280 will be less than half the cost of an equivalently configured Sun Fire 4800. A base Sun Fire 4800 with four 900MHz UltraSparc-III+ processors and 4GB of main memory (half of that installed on the V1280) sells for $174,145 in the States at list price, which equates to about 161,550 euros at current exchange rates.
In a related development, we hear that Sun is getting ready to kill off the Sun Fire 3800 eight-way midframe server. This box offers two dynamic domains and uses the same four-way uniboards as the Sun Fire 12-way 4800, 24-way 6800, 36-way 12000 and 72-way 15000. The Sun Fire 3800, which was announced in March 2001, competes more or less directly with the Sun Fire V880, a value-class machine based on two-way boards that does not support domains. The Sun Fire V880 is half the cost of the Sun Fire 3800, and has been a much hotter seller. The demise of the Sun Fire 3800 does not, however, spell doom for the Sun Fire 4800, although the advent of the V1280 (which appears to use the same or a variant of the uniboards used in the non-V Sun Fire machines) will put pressure on Sun Fire 4800 sales just like the V880 did on the Sun Fire 3800.
Source: Computerwire
