Motherboard Price Cuts: Sun Reduces Price and Raises Performance of Popular Ultra AXi Motherboards - Sun Microsystems' SPARCEngine Ultra AXi motherboards - Company Business and Marketing

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Dec 7, 1998

Tuesday, Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced a major price reduction of up to 22 percent off its SPARCEngine Ultra AXi family of motherboards.

Sun also announced the addition of the fastest version of its UltraSPARC IIi microprocessor - the 360 MHz - into the Ultra AXi family of motherboards. These changes show that Sun is dedicated to the high-end embedded market by bringing its latest technology at cost-competitive prices.

Sun now provides all the benefits of SPARC - high-performance, scalability, reliability - at prices comparable to lower performing offerings to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and integrators building systems for high-performance compute intensive applications like ISP services and medical imaging.

"For OEMs and system integrators, downtime is not acceptable. The combination of SPARC and Solaris have been delivering mission critical reliability for Sun's systems customers for years," said Marge Breya, vice president of marketing, Sun Microsystems, Microelectronics. "Our customers can take that same technology and incorporate it into their designs. With the faster processor and lower cost, it should make it even more attractive."

With its high-level of integration, the Ultra AXi lends itself to both network and industrial applications. Secant Network Technologies, a leader in high-performance VPN solutions for Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks, is using the Ultra AXi in their cryptographic systems to provide secure multimedia transmissions worldwide.

Rave Computer Association, Inc., a system integrator, is utilizing the Ultra AXi in the development of a mirror-imaging system for caching services for advanced Internet service providers like Mirror Image Internet, Inc. Although they are very different applications, both require fast compute power, low costs and high reliability, all features of the Ultra AXi boards.

"Sun's Ultra AXi boards give us performance and scalability so we can offer customers a high speed, high availability top level caching service that can be customized to fit our needs, whether it be 270 MHz or 360 MHz today or something faster in the future," said Martin Alsen, Vice President Marketing, Mirror Image Internet, Inc. "In addition to the performance, Mirror Image needs the reliability that you can only get with the combination of SPARC processors and the Solaris operating environment."

"Cost and product differentiation are key factors for success in the ATM network security market," said Mel Snyder, vice president of operations for SECANT. "We chose Sun's Ultra AXi boards over competing architectures because, with this price reduction, we no longer pay a premium to get the performance advantages of SPARC."

"At Rave, we have been designing SPARC solutions for years. The reliability and robustness of the architecture has allowed us to develop creative solutions and implementations," said Bev LeBoeuf, director of marketing, Rave Computer Association. "Sun's ability to deliver its technology at a lower price point will enable us to reach customers that have previously thought the power of SPARC to be out of their reach."

The Ultra AXi motherboard is a PCI-based platform targeted to OEMs with high-performance compute requirements, such as telco servers, cable modem access systems, medical imaging and a broad range of 19 inch rack Internet server applications. This platform leverages the highly-integrated UltraSPARC IIi microprocessor family, including the recently announced 360 MHz version. It also supports an industry standards-based ATX form factor, and enables unprecedented price/performance points compared to previous Sun offerings.

Pricing

Ultra AXi motherboards running at 270 MHz, 300 MHz and 333 MHz are available today. In volumes of 500 units, they sell for $US 1,250, $US 1,350 and $US 1,950 respectively. The 360 MHz version of the board will be available in early December and will sell for $US 2,250 in volume quantities.

FMI: (800) 681-8845 or http://www.sun.com/microelectronics.>

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