Sun Microsystems Inc has been playing its Unix System V.4 operating system cards pretty close to its chest since it declared an intention to go down that road, but Sun officials in London last week revealed that the Sparc workstation builder will declare its hand in November or December this year with the release of […]
Sun Microsystems Inc has been playing its Unix System V.4 operating system cards pretty close to its chest since it declared an intention to go down that road, but Sun officials in London last week revealed that the Sparc workstation builder will declare its hand in November or December this year with the release of SunOS 5.0, its implementation of Unix System V.4. By this time Sun will have its multi-processing offering, the Sparc-based Galaxy system, on the market – it’s expected later this summer. Sun UK’s Andrew Russell and John Coon revealed that the firm’s entire range of Sparc-based server systems will be upgradable to the multi-processor configuration via board-level swap-outs. The Galaxy is thought to be a two-tier affair, with a dual-processor offering based on Cypress Semiconductor Corp’s 28.5 MIPS CMOS Sparc to be followed by a two- to eight-processor system possibly using the 80 MIPS CMOS Sparc dubbed Lightning, being developed by LSI Logic Corp, Metaflow Technologies Inc and Hyundai Electronics, or a 40 MIPS Texas Instruments Inc part. The thing will run Sun’s implementation of the Unix System V.4 kernel with its own multi-processing extensions. Galaxy will not use superscalar Sparc technology – that will be implemented in workstations planned for next year. Both Texas Instruments, with its 40MHz, 80 MIPS BiCMOS Viking Sparc, and Cypress Semiconductor’s Pinochle Sparc, are doing superscalar implementations of Sun’s RISC part. Rumours of a new high-performance version of Sun’s diskless Sparcstation SLC planned for June or July were denied, although the firm is adamant that it can get its workstation products down below the $5,000 barrier. It may be that it will wait until its new financial year, which begins on July 1, to announce new products that can kick into its revenue stream.
