Sun's new UltraSPARC workstation: the Blade 1500

Roman Hauptmann writes "Here's a review of Sun's newest single-CPU workstation based on the UltraSPARC IIIi processor. According to the review, the system barely performs on the level of a P4 1.8ghz machine yet it sells for several times the price. Despite that, the Blade series still brings value to those who do visualization and imaging."

Comments

80GB Seagate drive?

[WombatDeath]

I'd hope that, for $3-4k, they could do a bit better than an 80GB (2MB cache) Seagate drive. Do "those who do visualization and imaging" really not care about the performance of their storage?

I've never yet seen a machine which skimps on its essential components justify its price tag. No surprise here.

Re:80GB Seagate drive?

[PoiBoy]

This is Sun's entry-level workstation, for people don't do heavy lifting but need to be able to work in a Solaris environment.

The Blade 2000 and Blade 2500 workstations have SCSI drives, better graphics, and much faster USparc III Cu processors with 8 MB cache, etc.

Re:Performace

[be-fan]

Maybe on sheer performance it will be beaten by x86 however for crunching big data sets the UltraSparc is just more effecient.
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If by "efficient" you mean "more instructions per clock" than yes, UltraSPARC is more efficient. But workstation people really don't care about efficiency. They care about total instructions executed per second. And x86 machines have the upper hand here.

There are lots of advantages to Sun hardware generally, but this machine doesn't seem to have those:

- Sun machines usually have high-quality SCSI disk drives. This machine has a standard PC IDE drive.
- Sun machines usually have support for many CPUs. This machine supports one.
- Sun machines usually have insane memory bandwidth. This machine has less bandwidth than a P4.
- Sun machines usually have extensive I/O capabilities. This machine has your standard 64/66 PCI slots.

Re:CPU

[nelsonal]

I think the SPARC IV is due sometime in the next few months (probably just for the big iron for 6 months or so), if I recall correctly it's largely a dual core SPARC III with more incremental improvements. There is at least speculation that SUN will offer an Opteron based workstation in addition to the already announced entry-level server. I think there is development on a SPARC V, Fujitsu seems to be having better luck with their SPAEC implementations currently. There are also rumors that a bigger partnership will develop between the two firm's development.

Re:Performace

[ValourX]

Okay, I know this is feeding the trolls and such, but I knew this issue would come up.

I did ask Sun, not only for benchmarks that they used for testing, but at very least for results that they'd gotten from their SPEC benchmarks that everybody runs. I waited, re-requested and did not receive them.

The reason why SPEC ViewPerf wouldn't install was because of a problem with GCC that I couldn't figure out and couldn't get from Google. Since it wasn't an issue with Solaris 8 (well, sort of) and wasn't an issue with the hardware, I didn't publish anything that I couldn't verify personally. If you feel that's poor journalism then, quite frankly, you don't belong on the Internet.

The Blade 1500 has been for sale since November. It's completely unreasonable to assume that only I had access to it...

-Jem

Re:Performace

[thewiz]

There are lots of advantages to Sun hardware generally, but this machine doesn't seem to have those:

- Sun machines usually have high-quality SCSI disk drives. This machine has a standard PC IDE drive.
- Sun machines usually have support for many CPUs. This machine supports one.
- Sun machines usually have insane memory bandwidth. This machine has less bandwidth than a P4.
- Sun machines usually have extensive I/O capabilities. This machine has your standard 64/66 PCI slots.

You forgot to mention that Sun USED to manufacture their own machines. Now they have Acer Computers do it for them (literally!).