SparcServer 1000

From: r. 'bear' stricklin <red_at_bears.org>
Date: Sat Mar 31 18:28:39 2001

On Sat, 31 Mar 2001, R. D. Davis wrote:

> Is anyone here familiar with the Sun SparcServer 1000 systems? This
> morning, I picked one up at a hamfest; it has two CPU boards in it,
> each, it appears, has 4 CPUs. I was able to identify one of the
> boards from it's part number from what I found on the net; appears to
> have 20MHz CPUs; the other board is a higher number, but I've found
> little data for it this far. The CPU boards are: 501-2336 and
> 501-2541. Does anone have any data on these?

Those are the XDBus boards, identifying which won't tell you much. The
processor modules plug into the MBus. They're likely to be dual 50 MHz
modules, either with 1 MB secondary cache, or without. Find the part
number for the MBus modules and we can tell you more.

What IS 20 MHz, though, is the SBus on those boards.

The 501-2336 board is an FRU, while the 501-2541 came with the system and
had a pair of SM51 (50 MHz, 1 MB L2 cache) processor modules on the MBus.

> Being unfmamiliar with multiprocessor systems, I'm wondering how fast
> this will be in comparison to my 170MHz Ultra-1; slower for some
> things and faster for others, I guess, while consuming much more
> power---is this correct?

Nah, your U1 is likely to be a whole lot faster in nearly every respect,
especially if it's the Enterprise 170, with its 100 Mbit ethernet and
fast/wide SCSI. The SS1000 will continue to perform under a much heavier
load, though, if it does indeed have 8 CPUs. Same caveats with any SMP
system. The SM51 isn't a slouch, but it is old and comparatively slow.

> Wow, this is one heavy machine! In order to figure out if Solaris 8
> can run on it, do I count the total amount of memory in the system, or
> the amount of memory per CPU? Haven't identified the memory in it
> yet, but one CPU board has 12 banks filled.

Total memory in the system and is installed in matched sets of four
modules. Traditionally, modules for this system were available in 8 and 32
MB sizes.

The 8 MB SIMMs have part number 501-1817 while the 32 MB variety have part
number 501-2196.

Solaris support for the sun4d first appeared in Solaris 2.2 and is
supported in Solaris 8, but "will be dropped any day now".

I think this machine is off topic for the list, though, by about two
years. (;

ok
r.
Received on Sat Mar 31 2001 - 18:28:39 BST