Sun pushes faster CPUs, server price cuts

Nips and tucks at low-end

By Ashlee Vance in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Servers, 3rd June 2003 08:32 GMT

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Sun Microsystems has sweetened up part of its low-end server line with faster chips and price cuts.

Starting Tuesday, Sun will begin shipping its eight processor V880 server with 1.05GHz UltraSPARC III CPUs. In addition, Sun will trim prices on its four processor V480 system and the V880 by between 17 percent and 25 percent.

The V480 and V880 fit into Sun's volume systems Unix server line, which includes servers with one to 12 chips. The two systems are some of the strongest sellers in this bunch and have been key to keeping Sun afloat during the downturn.

Sun hopes to keep up this trend by making the biggest price cuts on the higher end V880. A four processor system with 8G bytes of memory will cost $45,000, as compared to $60,000 for a server with 900MHz UltraSPARC III processors.

Sun is in the process of trickling faster 1.2GHz UltraSPARC IIIs throughout its entire hardware line and said the chips will eventually make their way to the V480 and V880. ®

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