The Sun Ultra is a discontinued line of

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...

and

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

computers developed and sold by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

, comprising two distinct generations. The original line was introduced in 1995 and discontinued in 2001. This generation was partially replaced by the Sun Blade in 2000 and that line was in itself replaced by the Sun Java Workstation—an

AMD Opteron Opteron is AMD's x86 former server and workstation processor line, and was the first processor which supported the AMD64 instruction set architecture (known generically as x86-64). It was released on April 22, 2003, with the ''SledgeHammer'' co ...

system—in 2004. In sync with the transition to

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

-architecture processors, in 2005 the Ultra brand was later revived with the launch of the Ultra 20 and Ultra 40, albeit to some confusion, since they were no longer based on UltraSPARC processors.

History

Original model

The original Ultra workstations and the Ultra Enterprise (later, "Sun Enterprise") servers were

UltraSPARC The UltraSPARC is a microprocessor developed by Sun Microsystems and fabricated by Texas Instruments, introduced in mid-1995. It is the first microprocessor from Sun to implement the 64-bit SPARC V9 instruction set architecture (ISA). Marc Tre ...

-based systems produced from 1995 to 2001, replacing the earlier

SPARCstation The SPARCstation, SPARCserver and SPARCcenter product lines are a series of SPARC-based computer workstations and server (computing), servers in desktop, desk side (pedestal) and rack-based form factor configurations, that were developed and sol ...

and SPARCcenter/SPARCserver series respectively. This introduced the

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

UltraSPARC processor and in later versions, lower-cost PC-derived technology, such as the

PCI PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Prov ...

and ATA buses (the initial Ultra 1 and 2 models retained the SBus of their predecessors). The original Ultra range were sold during the

dot-com boom The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Intern ...

, and became one of the biggest selling series of computers ever developed by Sun Microsystems, with many companies and organisations—including Sun itself—relying on Sun Ultra products for years after their successor products were released.

Brand revival

The Ultra brand was revived in 2005 with the launch of the Ultra 20 and Ultra 40 with

-architecture. x64-based Ultra systems remained in the Sun portfolio for five more years; the last one, the Intel Xeon-based Ultra 27, was retired in June 2010, thereby concluding the history of Sun as a workstation vendor.

Late SPARC models

The SPARC-based Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation laptop was released in 2005 as well, but it would prove to be a short-lived design and was retired the next year. Its release did not coincide with the rest of the line as most of the brand had already moved on to x86. Additionally, new Ultra 25 and Ultra 45 desktop UltraSPARC IIIi-based systems were introduced in 2006. In October 2008, Sun discontinued all these, effectively ending the production of SPARC architecture workstations. The original Ultra/Enterprise series itself was later replaced by the Sun Blade workstation and

Sun Fire Sun Fire is a series of server (computing), server computers introduced in 2001 by Sun Microsystems (since 2010, part of Oracle Corporation). The Sun Fire branding coincided with the introduction of the UltraSPARC III processor, superseding ...

server ranges.

Sun Ultra models

Ultra workstations (1995–2001)

Ultra Enterprise/Enterprise servers

Entry-level

Note: the Enterprise 220R is an Ultra 60 motherboard in a rack-mountable server chassis with hot-swappable power supplies. Similarly, the Enterprise 420R is an Ultra 80 motherboard in a server chassis.

Mid-range and high-end

* = available as upgrade option only

Ultra workstations (2005–2010)

In the intervening time gap, Sun workstations were named Sun Blade and Sun Java Workstation.

UltraSPARC

The A60 Ultra 3 mobile workstation rebadged the Tadpole SPARCle (550 and 650 MHz) and Viper (1.2 GHz) laptops. The A61 Ultra 3 was physically different and was based on the Naturetech 888P (550/650 MHz) and Mesostation 999 (1.28 GHz). The two lines are unrelated systems otherwise.

x86

External links

* * *
Sun graphics cards
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sun Ultra Series Sun servers Sun workstations Computer-related introductions in 1995 SPARC microprocessor products 64-bit computers