Details of the proposed specification of a Solaris system featuring an appliance-optimised version of Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC III processor have been leaked to El Reg.

Enchilada, a two-way multiprocessor Solaris system based on the UltraSPARC IIIi (Jalapeno) processor, will become a cornerstone of Sun's low-end multiprocessor strategy to fend off the threat posed by Intel against lower-end RISC machines. The boxen can be considered as the follow on from Sun's Netra range of UltraSPARC II-based servers, and will probably be christened Sun Fire 240R on release (though this can change, especially after a Reg article).

When we first wrote about Jalapeno, we speculated that it might have a few price/performance boasts up its sleeve. Indeed such is the case with the inclusion of NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) on the machine, which enable it to handle non-uniform memory accesses that allow Solaris 8 to take advantage of the CPU's multi-processing and multi-threading features.

Enchilada systems, which come as either a two processor rack-mounted server or a tower workstation, are planned to feature either a 950MHz or 1.2GHz Jalapeno processor with 1MB of Level 2 cache, far less than features in midrange servers. The processor speed is less (at least on entry) than the 1.4GHz copper whoppers using a 0.13 micro fabrication process from Texas Instruments that industry sources have previously predicted Jalapeno might feature.

The memory technology used will feature two D-RDRAM channels per CPU, our leak suggests, and memory capacity will be either 256MB to 2GB per CPU or 512MB to 4GB per CPU. I/O expansion will be through four 64-bit, 33MHz PCI slots.

What we don't know is when the wonderfully named Enchilada (we're keen on the fine country of Mexico) will arrive. However Computergram (http://www.softwareuncovered.com/news/cgram-20010625.html) has reported that Enchilada systems will be "in the field" during the first half of 2002, and are to be followed up by four-way "Chalupa" entry Solaris servers, which will also feature Jalapeno. ®

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