Detailed View

• Overview
• Product Family Placement
• Key Users
• Key Markets
• Enabling Technologies

Overview

The SunPCi III coprocessor card is a cost-effective hardware solution that enables Sun systems to share data, peripherals, and network connections between Microsoft Windows and Solaris Operating Environments. The SunPCi III card allows you to run Microsoft Windows with familiar PC productivity applications running at native PC speeds on Sun systems alongside Solaris applications—saving valuable desk space and helping to improve personal productivity by having two systems in one. Best of all, the SunPCi III card leverages Sun's biggest strength: reliable and robust network computing.

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Product Family Placement

The SunPCi III card is one of several interoperability solutions from Sun that provides the ability to run PC applications or services on Sun systems.

SunPCi Coprocessor Cards
The SunPCi III card and its predecessors, the SunPCi and SunPCi II cards, are hardware-based solutions. The first generation SunPC card was a coprocessor card for SBus-based Sun systems. The second- and third-generation SunPCi cards constituted a full PC motherboard on a PCI card designed to be inserted into Sun's PCI-based systems. The new SunPCi III card upgrades the capabilities of the previous generations of SunPCi cards and is ideal for PC application users who need native high performance for their PC applications.

Terminal Server Software
Terminal servers allow UNIX® system users to run Microsoft Windows NT or Windows 2000-based applications on a Microsoft Windows NT server, sending the display windows back to the system in an X window. MetaFrame from Citrix is an example terminal server.

Microsoft Server Software
The SunPCi III card supports both NT and Windows 2000 server software. Services such as IIS and Exchange Server can run on the SunPCi platform. Furthermore, support for multiple cards in Sun servers allows new SunPCi "servers" to be brought online quickly and at low cost.

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Key Users

The SunPCi III coprocessor card is ideal for users who wish to run both Microsoft Windows and Solaris Operating Environment applications and who require the performance, robustness, and technical application availability of the Solaris Operating Environment with UltraSPARC® technology running on Sun systems.

For financial users who perform time-critical transactions, such as sales and trading, the SunPCi III card offers the ability to run familiar Windows native spreadsheets, macros, and other PC productivity applications at native speeds alongside mission-critical Solaris Operating Environment applications—thereby helping to free up limited desk space and lower the cost of hardware. Also, a single Sun system with two SunPCi III boards can allow financial customers to run "data gathering" applications on one board and run an analysis of that data at the same time on another board in the same system.

For users in technical markets, the SunPCi III card can provide a faster time to market and tighter integration with the enterprise letting users run standard PC productivity applications alongside best-of-class Solaris Operating Environment technical applications. The SunPCi III card also allows users to share files and data between applications running Microsoft Windows and the Solaris Operating Environment.

For software developers who develop code for multiple platforms and operating environments, the SunPCi III card offers the ability to run the necessary development environments (such as Microsoft Windows, the Solaris Operating Environment, or Java platforms) on a single system and at low cost. Sun delivers an affordable, high-performance, all-in-one solution. Developers can also run both development and system-under-test systems on a single Sun system when multiple cards are used. Additional software build environments can be checkpointed using the SunPCi III card's emulated disk images. Also, multiple SunPCi III cards in a Sun system means that developers can have one card running their development tools and/or debugger while another SunPCi III card runs their "system under test", without the need for multiple PC systems.

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Key Markets

Key markets include:

• Financial
• Electronic design automation (EDA)
• Mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD)
• Software development
• Education

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Enabling Technologies

Specialized SunPCi 3.x Software Drivers
Companion software drivers provided with the SunPCi III coprocessor card allow the operation between the Solaris Operating Environment and Microsoft Windows. These drivers allow users to:

• Host a Microsoft Windows session in an X11 window within the Solaris Operating Environment, CDE (common desktop environment), or Gnome desktop
• Copy and paste text between Solaris Operating Environment and Microsoft Windows applications
• Install a dedicated C: drive with up to 40 GB of space in the UNIX file system dedicated for Microsoft Windows (running on the SunPCi III card) and share that data with the Solaris Operating Environment
• Share the Sun system's Ethernet port (virtual networking), providing an excellent alternative if two Ethernet jacks are not available
• Share files on workstations and NFS servers with Windows running on the SunPCi III card
• Access printers connected to a Solaris Operating Environment network

Hardware Technologies
Hardware technologies used to improve the SunPCi III card include:

• A unique PCI form-factor design using PC2100 SODIMMs, which help to increase memory bandwidth and allow for better application performance
• Updated VIA chipset for on-board, 24-bit 2-D and 3-D graphics support

Solaris Operating Environment Interoperability
The SunPCi III card is integrated with the system in which it is installed. It uses the system's keyboard, mouse, floppy drive, hard drive, CD-ROM and Ethernet port as if they were its own, and it uses files from the Solaris Operating Environment file system to emulate the C: and D: drives. If the VGA port on the card is not used for a second display, the video from the SunPCi III card is routed to an X11 window on the system's monitor.

Other Solaris Operating Environment services are available to the SunPCi III card. Any file system which is mounted on the hosting system, local or networked, can be mapped to a network drive symbol on the PC. In addition, the SunPCi III card can access printers connected to a Solaris Operating Environment network. Nearly any Solaris Operating Environment service for which there is a Microsoft Windows client can be used from the SunPCi III card. The SunPCi III card must be assigned its own IP address. The SunPCi III card's Solaris Operating Environment drivers select net traffic addressed to the card and pass it to the card.

PC Interoperability
The SunPCi III card includes a network driver interface specification (NDIS) driver to route network traffic over the PCI bus to the system. NDIS drivers are standard for Microsoft Windows systems and are used to drive the vast majority of Ethernet cards. The NDIS driver completely masks the details of the network connection from the rest of the operating software. As a result, the SunPCi III card can participate fully in any PC-based network services that are normally used by Microsoft Windows-based systems, including PC-class distributed file systems. On the system side, the SunPCi III card software routes the traffic to the Solaris Operating Environment protocol stack and onto the net. The SunPCi III card has access to most Ethernet protocols, including TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, NetWare, and NetBEUI.

Note: The SunPCi III card requires its own IP address to support TCP/IP networking.

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