Sun adds a little more juice to v1280

Sun has upgraded one of the weirder servers in its product line, adding 1.2GHz chips to the 12 processor v1280.

Sun launched the v1280 back in February as a kind of low-cost alternative to some of its other midrange gear. The system does not have all of Sun's more advanced, read more expensive, mainframe like qualities for running dynamic domains, for example, or for upgrading processors on-the-fly. Still, the box offers customers up to 12 processors in a 12U package and has price closer to the volume products shipped by Sun.

The kit has been shipping with 900MHz chips, but will now be offered with the 1.2GHz UltraSparc IIIs. This translates to a 30 percent performance boost.

Sun launched the v1280 with great fanfare but has been relatively quiet about the system since. So who is using it? Sun lists Nortel Network North American Home Location Register as a customer. But even this Nortel group is using the Netra 1280 system, which is a telco-ready, more ruggedized version of the product.

IDC has shipments of the v1280 increasing 12 percent from Q2 to Q3. It's hard to gauge exactly how impressive this is given the rather short life span of the kit so far, but at least it's moving in the right direction for Sun. ®