Sun Adds Some Muscle to the Netra Server Lineup

Server manufacturer Sun Microsystems introduced an UltraSparc T2 rack-mount server pitched at telecommunications companies: the Sun Netra T5220. The server has been unveiled at the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, and comes with the Solaris 10 operating system.

The Sparc T2 processor is built on the Niagara architecture and features the eight-core, 64-thread Sparc design with floating point units on every core. This feature allows the processor to achieve twice the rough performance of the previous Sparc T1 CPU running at 1.2 GHz or 1.4 GHz stock clock speeds.

The Netra T5220 server comes in a 2U rack-mounted chassis configuration and supports T2 processors running at default speeds of 1.2 GHz on four, six, or eight cores, for 32, 48, or 64 processing threads, respectively. The server is only available in single-chip mode, given the fact that Sun will not offer multi-CPU systems, or at least, not until the arrival of the next generation of chips in the Niagara-3 family, codenamed "the Victoria Falls".

Moreover, Sun also demonstrated the upcoming Netra rack-mount and blade servers powered by Intel's quad-core Xeon processors. They will be part of Sun's new line of carrier-grade telecom servers and will be powered by energy-efficient processors in the 45-nanometer family.

"When these servers are available next quarter, Sun will have the broadest lineup of telco servers in the industry, giving customers a choice of every major processor architecture and operating system in both ATCA blade and carrier-grade rack-mount versions," Mark Butler, Netra systems product line director for Sun, said.

The Netra T5220 server comes with built-in cryptographic hardware acceleration, as well as 10 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. The expansion slots are more than enough for a server model, and are comprised of six PCI slots and four Ethernet interfaces. The server supports redundant power supplies and up to 4 storage 146-GB SAS drives.

The new server is already available for sale, at a starting price of $14,995.