Sun to Introduce High-Powered Computers

Sun Microsystems will unveil a line of high-powered computers this week that it says are faster and more versatile than traditional mainframes. The Mountain View company said the new machines, which use technology developed for supercomputers, will be able to crunch data at more than twice the speed of current industry-standard mainframes. They are also specifically designed to operate on networks, unlike mainframes. Called Ultra Enterprise 10000 servers, the computers will be priced from $500,000 to $2 million and sold to big corporate customers such as banks and insurance companies. The new machines will allow Sun to enter the high-end computing market for the first time.