Sun Cuts V480, V880 Prices By Up to 25 Percent

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Sun Microsystems will today announce price cuts on its midrange Sun Fire V480 and V880 servers ranging from 17 percent to 25 percent, depending on the configuration. These V series machines, which do not support the dynamic partitioning features found in the Sun Fire midframe machines, are Sun's main weapon against Intel-based machines running Windows and Linux. The V series machines have lower prices than the midframe machines, and after today's price cuts, they are even lower.

As part of the announcement, Sun is also adding the 1.05 GHz version of the UltraSparc-III processor to the V800, which is an eight-way machine code-named "Daktari," that Sun launched in October 2001. The initial machine had from one to four of Sun's two-way uniboards with the 750 MHz version of the UltraSparc-III processor. The V480 servers, code-named "Cherrystone," were launched in June 2002 using the 900 MHz versions of the UltraSparc-III processors; at that time, Sun rolled these faster processors into the V880 servers. The 1.05 GHz version of the UltraSparc-III processor first shipped in Sun's Blade 2000 workstations in March 2002, was rolled into midframe servers (that's the Sun Fire 3800, 4800, and 6800 machines, with a maximum of 8, 12, and 24 processors, respectively) and enterprise servers (that's the 36-way Sun Fire 12000 and 72-way Sun Fire 15000) in August 2002.

Warren Mootrey, director of marketing for Sun's Volume Systems Products group, says that the price cuts on configured V480 and V880 systems are possible because of manufacturing efficiencies at Sun's factories as well as a bit of good fortune. Sun, he says, was anticipating a rise in main memory costs about now, and that price rise did not materialize. Presumably this price rise, which was modeled six quarters ago, was going to be offset by manufacturing efficiencies. But now that it didn't happen, Sun is passing the savings on to customers.

Here's how the cuts stack up. A two-way V480 using the 900 MHz processors and equipped with 4 GB of main memory and 72 GB of disk capacity now sells for $19,995, down 13.1 percent from $22,995. A four-way V480 with 8 GB of main memory and 72 GB of disk costs $34,995, down 20.6 percent. A large configuration of this machine with 16 GB of main memory costs $42,995, down 8.5 percent. The price of a V880 with two 1.05 GHz processors, 4 GB of main memory, and 438 GB of disk is $32,995, down 10.8 percent from the cost of the same machine equipped with slower 900 MHz processors. That works out to about 25 percent better bang for the buck. A V880 with four processors, 8 GB of memory, and 438 GB of disk costs $44,995, down 25 percent and delivering a price/performance improvement of roughly 36 percent. A V880 with eight processors, 16 GB of memory, and the same disks costs $85,999, 14 percent lower than the cost of the same configuration using 900 MHz UltraSparc-IIIs and about 26 percent better bang for the buck.

Sun is not rolling the 1.05 GHz version of the UltraSparc-III processor into the V480 right now, says Mootrey, but he says that it seems reasonable that Sun will do this within a quarter or so. Similarly, as soon as Sun can make enough 1.2 GHz UltraSparc-III processors, it will roll them into the V880, again probably within the next quarter or so.