Sun Microsystems has entered the DCC market with the Sun Java Workstation W2100z, a dual-processor system based on off-the-shelf AMD Opteron CPUs and NVIDIA graphics cards.

Sun Microsystems, a widely-accepted player in network servers and engineering workstations, but a stranger in the world of digital content creation for the masses, has quietly entered the DCC market with a new pair of workstations. These machines, dubbed the Sun Java Workstation W1100z and W2100z, are single-and dual-processor systems, respectively. They are the first desktop workstations from Sun based not on its own SPARC processors and Solaris operating system, but on off-the-shelf AMD Opteron CPUs and NVIDIA graphics cards.

Sun has chosen to leave the choice of OS to the consumer (Solaris is included with the systems, but there’s nothing stopping you from installing Linux or Windows on your own.) What’s more, Sun has coupled these new systems with a unique sales strategy: It is offering its single-processor machines not only through normal sales channels, but at auction on eBay, effectively letting the market set the price.

As the CG industry has increasingly standardized on Windows and Linux operating systems running on general-purpose computing hardware and off-the-shelf graphics cards, the companies with proprietary workstations and workstation operating systems, such as SGI, Apple and Sun, have lost their competitive edge in the high-end 3D animation marketplace. Practically speaking, the old moniker of “workstation” has lost its meaning, anyway; the term comes from the days of expensive software running on equally expensive hardware: These astronomically priced systems were typically operated 24-7 by a revolving queue of artists who would sit down at a company’s single “workstation” for an eight-hour shift before handing over the keys to the next artist. Hardware and software, to a large degree, have become cheap enough for everyone to have their own, and what distinguishes a “workstation” from a “desktop” is merely one or more fast CPUs coupled with a high-end 3D graphics card. But nowadays, fast CPUs are a dime-a-dozen, and even the loftiest of 3D graphics cards available from NVIDIA, ATI and 3DLabs has a street price of under $1,500.

While some may question the need for even more PC clones, Sun’s entry makes perfect sense from the corporate point of view. While low-cost clone makers can put together a fast 3D-graphics “workstation” for barely more than the price of the chips, drives and graphics cards it contains, strip-mall vendors generally offer bare-bones service to match their plain-vanilla enclosures. That leaves only a handful of large vendors offering high-performance 3D workstations and corporate-class support systems: IBM, Dell, HP/Compaq and big boutique vendors BOXX and Alienware, to name the conspicuous competitors. For studios that prefer to buy all their hardware from a single source (including artist workstations, render-farm boxes and file servers) and that want a single phone number to call when one of the machines goes south, these big-name vendors are the only reliable choice. Sun’s new workstations are its attempt to round out its lineup of hardware offerings (which also include Intel Xeon-based servers) enabling it to join this elite group of vendors in the creative marketplace.

Although Sun’s new PCs are dubbed “Sun Java Workstations,” the naming may serve to confuse likely buyers. No one should be fooled into believing these are intended for Java programming or some kind of open-source Web development: There’s no rational need for a top-of-the-line 3D graphics card in a programming or Web development box, and Java is not an integral part of the 3D artist’s toolkit. Nor should anyone imagine that these systems are built on black-box hardware like other Sun machines. While Sun’s enclosure, with brushed aluminum over dark-gray paint, looks great and is elegantly utilitarian with its spring clips and uncluttered internal component layout, there’s not as much as a transistor under the hood that you couldn’t pick up at your favorite computer-geek superstore.

Wide Ranging Compatibility
As for compatibility with industry standards, I tested the dual-processor model, the W2100z, configured with dual 2.4GHz model 250 Opterons, and NVIDIA’s Quadro FX3000 grahpics card. The machine comes without an OS on the hard drive, so I installed a multi-boot system with the beta of Microsoft’s 64-bit version of Windows XP, as well as the standard 32-bit version, and then, I also set up a boot partition with the 64-bit version of Red Hat’s Linux Enterprise 64-bit edition. Although the machine ships with Sun’s Solaris, none of the applications in my animation toolkit include Solaris versions, so I skipped installing it.

By far, the most difficult part of the configuration process was installing a driver for the Adaptec Ultra320 SCSI raid card. This card comes as a high-performance option (Serial ATA or “SATA,” which supports slightly slower, but cheaper higher-capacity drives, is also available). There is no compatible Ultra320 driver shipping for 64-bit Windows, and I had to obtain a beta from Adaptec, then build up a custom installation CD to get it working, since this machine ships without a floppy drive. This is a situation that will quickly be resolved once Adaptec gets its drivers finished and onto Microsoft’s latest 64-bit Windows release.