These X-options are orderable today, but will have long ship lead times. They will be generally available starting March 31, 2001. Both 600 and 750 MHz CPU modules are interchangeable and the different CPU speeds can be mixed in one system. When my organization buys a Sun Blade 1000 high-end workstation, instead of similar system from our competitors, we get excellent Return on Asset Value via interoperability with our existing hardware and software investments, because Sun's vision of Technical Enterprise Computing delivers binary compatibility and the architecture necessary for the new dot com world. Multiple CPUs allows customer to upgrade as needed without incurring undue cost upfront.
Some competitors force two CPUs without the option of starting off with only one.
Expandable from one CPU to two CPUs and ability to mix CPU speeds. For some applications, the size of the cache is key to performance. Large L1 caches increase performance for smaller applications. Large L2 caches increase performance when the L1 cache is not enough. Since applications are getting larger, customers get increased performance by keeping as much of their application in cache and out of the slower secondary disk storage.