If I remember correctly, this board was originally announced back in March, or at least that's when I first came across it. It's essentially an upgrade from the UP1100 (AMD-750 PC100 SDRAM) using AMD's uniprocessor DDR chipset.
As to how much availability we'll ever see from this...well, I can't say for sure, but there are a few caveats. First off, a couple months ago, API Networks -- the joint Compaq-Samsung company created to build and sell Alpha based products -- laid off their server division (about 25% of the company) in order to transition to being a silicon company. Furthermore, it was reported last month that AMD will discontinue production of the AMD-760 chipset (which the UP1500 is based on) as they feel it is no longer needed to support the Athlon platform following the introduction of VIA's KT266A, Nvidia's nForce, and so on. So this means that it may not even be possible for the UP1500 to be productized (according to Samsung, it is still listed as "Under Development" -- the same as it was eight months ago) due to the lack of a source of AMD-760 core logic, and even if it is released, there may not be anyone to support it.
Unlike most of the other Sun boxes in the lineup, the U5 has an IDE disk interface and a bad one at that. Depending upon the age of your U5, it may be a 5400 RPM disk. I imagine that should explain your I/O performance issues quite well. I currently use a U30 with Solaris 8 and UFS logging enabled...the performance is excellent and the stability is flawless.
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If I remember correctly, this board was originally announced back in March, or at least that's when I first came across it. It's essentially an upgrade from the UP1100 (AMD-750 PC100 SDRAM) using AMD's uniprocessor DDR chipset.
As to how much availability we'll ever see from this...well, I can't say for sure, but there are a few caveats. First off, a couple months ago, API Networks -- the joint Compaq-Samsung company created to build and sell Alpha based products -- laid off their server division (about 25% of the company) in order to transition to being a silicon company. Furthermore, it was reported last month that AMD will discontinue production of the AMD-760 chipset (which the UP1500 is based on) as they feel it is no longer needed to support the Athlon platform following the introduction of VIA's KT266A, Nvidia's nForce, and so on. So this means that it may not even be possible for the UP1500 to be productized (according to Samsung, it is still listed as "Under Development" -- the same as it was eight months ago) due to the lack of a source of AMD-760 core logic, and even if it is released, there may not be anyone to support it.
Unlike most of the other Sun boxes in the lineup, the U5 has an IDE disk interface and a bad one at that. Depending upon the age of your U5, it may be a 5400 RPM disk. I imagine that should explain your I/O performance issues quite well. I currently use a U30 with Solaris 8 and UFS logging enabled...the performance is excellent and the stability is flawless.