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Sun-Fujitsu server launch April 17

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
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  • Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
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Stephen Shankland

Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu plan to announce the fruits of their Advanced Product Line (APL) server partnership Tuesday in New York.

John Fowler, Sun's executive vice president for servers, and Chiaki Ito, a corporate senior executive vice president at Fujitsu, will make the announcement, according to an invitation for the event. The APL systems were due to ship in mid-2006, according to the original plan announced in 2004, but the schedule slipped into 2007, and Sun said in February that the APL products would ship in the first half of the year.

The APL systems use Fujitsu's dual-core, dual-thread "Olympus" member of the Sparc64 processor family. Fujitsu designs and builds its own processors that are compatible with Sun's UltraSparc models; Fujitsu's models include reliability features from its mainframe servers. Sun signed the Fujitsu partnership at the same time it scrapped its own UltraSparc V processor and focused design resources on its own high-end 16-core "Rock" processor due to ship in servers in the second half of 2008.

In what was something of a surprise for Sun, the company's UltraSparc IV+ processor fared better than expected in the marketplace, and Sun just goosed the line with new 1.95GHz and 2.1GHz models. However, some analysts believe Sun's high-end server sales were lackluster in the first quarter of 2007, historically a tough one for the company.