Sun debuts motherboards for CompactPCI systems

Electronic News, Feb 23, 1998

stuttgart, germany--Sun Microsystems unveiled additions to its Sparc line of motherboards--the new Sparcengine CP-1200 and -1500 embedded-board computers, claimed to be the first boards conforming to the CompactPCI standard. The company introduced the products in a city that is viewed as the center of German industry.

The CompactPCI form factor makes the industry-preferred VME bus able to employ PCI silicon, and single board computer makers are now in full swing migration to it. Telecom equipment makers are among the industrial market's biggest segment, and Ericsson, a market leader in that segment, endorsed Sun's move. Jorma Mobrin, VP, corporate technologies for Telefonaktibolaget LM Ericsson, said his company welcomed Sun's entry. The Sparc architecture "coupled with an industry standard form factor," he said, "will allow telecommunications companies to rapidly create" new products.

"Sun is entering the CompactPCI market from a position of strength," said Jeff Veis, Sun's platform products group marketing manager, because Sun enters with the Sparc processor and Solaris operating system. The boards meet industry's rack-mount capable and high-speed backplane bus architecture requirements.

According to a 1997 report by Electronic Trends Publications, the CompactPCI market is projected to reach more than $1 billion in sales by the year 2001.

Behind the CP 1200 is a 100MHz microSparc-IIep processor with integrated DRAM and 33MHz PCI bus interface. The CPU's cache is 16 kilobytes for instructions and 9KB for data. Its SCSI interface comes via Symbios Logic's 53C875 chip. Fitting the industrial segment's demands, mean time between failures is 362,013 hours, according to Sun.

The CP 1500 is higher end. It will initially be available with Sun's 270Mhz, 64-bit UltraSparc-IIi microprocessor and UltraSparc upgrades will follow, Sun said. The 1500 incorporates dual channel 100Mbit Ethernet routed to both the front and back of the card and on-board ultra-wide SCSI controller. With these features and support for up to 256MB of on-board memory, Sun said it will work well in the hard-core telecom applications of PBX, central office switching and cellular base station control.

The CP 1200 is now sampling and volume production is planned for the second quarter. Boards in quantities of 500 are to sell for less than $1,500. The CP 1500 is scheduled to sample in April and get to volume by mid-year; it will sell for less than $7,000 in 500-piece quantities. GNP Computers will be among Sun's OEMs, according to GNP president Roger Baar.