Slashdot Mirror
Sun's New Workstations and Graphics Cards
An anonymous reader "Sun Microsystems has released the Sun Blade 2000 workstation, along with a new graphics accelerator, the XVR-1000. This could very well give SGI's lineup a run for its money in the CAD and Visualization fields, although its fillrate and 38-bit colour may make it less desirable for animation. Make sure to check out Ace's article. " (page down
a couple times to read it)
How does that break down storage wise?
Will Sun continue to make the old model?
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-860701.html
This thing comes equipped with dual 1.05GHz Ultrasparc III CPUs. I guess these are Sun's answer to Intel's 64-bit CPUs.
Personally, I'd like to see this and HP's PA-RISC architectures gain some footholds again. HP might be too far behind, but a 1GHz 64-bit CPU certainly isn't behind in technology.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
SGI is going bankrupt and hasn't released any new innovative products in years. I'd hope a new(er) sun box could beat them. It's only been on the drawning board for about two and a half years now. Then again, when they made a superiour operating system, they couldn't beat Microsoft. When they made a superiour processor, they couldn't beat Digital or Intel. So they probably won't beat SGI. As Sun is going right now, they themselves probably wont be around in a year or two. Thank you linux!
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
Here is a mirror.
Alan Thicke's Journal
My Slashdot ads say "
http://www.sun.com/2002-0314/feature/
The system ships with a 73gb fibrechannel harddisc, 900 or 1.05 UltraSparcIII (dual capable), and a gig of ram. nice box. It sets a world record in workstation performance (halfway down the press-release).
Not flame bait, but a legitimate question. What would someone be using a $34,000 workstation for? Even a $9,000 one?
They can't possibly be selling THAT many of them.
Anyone here using them? What for? Is a PC really not that powerful?
SunBlades have served better as terminals in the past. I don't really know if this newer offering is going to be any good or not. While the specs do look impressive, there may be smaller things that keep the SGI workstations on top. Solaris does make a great desktop unix OS though. I loved it when I had a SPARCstation.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Direct link to the post as a stand-alone page.
This could very well give SGI's lineup a run for its money in the CAD and Visualization fields
Maybe, except that that most of the 3D Unix stuff is designed for SGI/Irix... I guess when you're Sun you can get stuff ported if you want, though!
Looks like a kickass box.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
I meant published, not packaged. As slashcode tells me, I shold have used the 'preview'-button.
I have Sunblade 100, from which I write this comment. From my experience, this machine is by a factor 4 (yes, four) time slower than a new Athlon XP 1.9... And it costs much much more.
If it wasn't for endianness compatibility with existing binary data, I wouldn't be using it.
I meant "should", not "shold". This time, I'll use the 'preview' button. Really.
In case you've been under a rock for the past 5 years...
HP kinda joined forces with INTEL to make their 64 bit CPU
3d modeling - SGI's niche is chemical modeling and other 3D realtime rendering. Takes a lot of horsepower to compute those 3D models, and most boxes with that much horsepower don't have a good graphics card (exccept SGI's machines).
and at only $11K its a steal.
Or rather, thats the only way I'm getting one, theft.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
Sun never needed to answer to Intel's 64bit cpus. Sun corners a market that Intel has not even begun to penetrate yet.
Just the fact that Sun and Alpha have been doing 64bit years illustrates that fact.
Also there is a little bit of a misconception here. They perform drastically different because of the SMP bus architecture and just the fact that it's CISC vs RISC etc.
and at only $11,000 for the base entry (with no keyboard or monitor and at 900 mhz w/ only 1 cpu) model they're a steal ;P (clicking through the options it's actually more, $45 for a usb keyboard? i mean really).. i realize these are aimed at big business but this still doesn't seem realistic
i wonder how they can justify a price tag like that, sure the hardware is great but i'm willing to bet someone could build a comparable p4 machine for well less than half what they're asking..
Their low end workstations is being decimated by Xeon and Athlon offerings which cost 1/4 the price of Sun's. At the high end Sun is being killed by 8, 12 and 16 way Xeon boxes from Dell and IBM -- again for a quarter the price of equivalent powered Sun offerings. Each passing day big corporations are migrating away from Sun to a little known operating system called "Linux".
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
What do you mean 38 bit color makes it less desirable for animation?
That is just wrong. This has 10 bits per component RGB. Typically that's more than enough. In addition animation apps like Maya tend to be geometry and state limited not fill limited.
Ofcourse the tag 'animation' is a bit to vague to mean anything in the first place.
Well done Sun, this should cause SGI some pain, but I'd say more because it gives the impression that Sun is doing something interesting where SGI hasn't done anything genuinely interesting in a LONG time.
I dont think that intel ever really had a question for Sun to answer. At 800MHz, Intel's 64it chip is slow in the all important MHz rating (sun has had 900's out for a while now) and still has a few years of compiler design ahead of it before it makes any sense. And this is Sun's 3+rd generation of 64 bit chips, vs Intel's 1st.
As for HP, they helped intel build their 64 bit chip, so the PA-RISC is more or less dead.
However, I just bought 2 from Sun on a developer deal
for ~800 a piece. How much was the Athlon 1.9? If
it wasn't stolen, they ought to be the same price.
Also what are you running to "benchmark"?
For a more "real" Sun Box try on the Blade 1000 or
Blade 2000. They cost "considerably" more but they
are not teathered by slow 5400 IDE HD's etc. Cheap
video etc. Note that you cannot get this crazy
video card for the Blade 100.
The Blade 100 is what it was meant to be, a cheap
entry level box. Definatly effient and economical
for farms of UNIX coders.
It still is one of the best out there, and the now-defunct Alpha EV8 would have been a powerful contender to IBM POWER4.
Some Alpha EV8 articles:
Alpha EV8 (Part 1): Simultaneous Multi-Threat
Alpha EV8 (Part 2): Simultaneous Multi-Threat
Alpha EV8 (Part 3): Simultaneous Multi-Threat
The Spider and the Mountain (Alpha EV8 vs. Intel Itanium)
You can thank those Compaq morons in Houston and complicit jerks at Intel for killing Alpha, in particular Compaq CEO Michael Capellas. May they be damned to hell.
PA
Heed this warning, if you buy one of these to do rendering make sure to benchmark it before you send Sun a check.
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
On their pricing page, a memory upgrade to 4GB is $20,000. wow. A gigbit ethernet card is $1800.
I'm sorta speechless here. What exactly about this machine makes it worth this kind of money?
They are lying and saying it's the best color fidelity in the workstation market. 30 bits = 10 bits/channel RGB. SGI's workstations have been shipping 12 bit/channel RGBA (48 bit color) for years. (The first being the Reality Engine back 10 years ago, and more recently, VPro V12 graphics in Octanes and their new Fuel workstation) SGI's VPro V12 beats these boards in both lit triangle rate and textured fill rate.
It's been 2 years since I installed a 32bit cpu or processor in the data center.
Check out the benchmarks at this site. The scores reflect the time in seconds it took the computer to run a specific sequence of pre-defined events. AMD and Intel are KILLING Sun when it comes to price VS performance.
I'm really not sure what Sun can do to stop the tidal wave that appears to be heading toward them. In the early 90's, engineering workstations were REQUIRED for high-end work such as CAD, but nowadays, you can get the same (or better) performance with a sub-$5,000 machine with a great graphics card.
I recently did a comparison on some EDA tools (spice and the like). A Blade 1000 was 36% slower than a 1.7Gz Intel Xeon. The people saying "duh, look at the speed Ghz" aren't looking at the right data.
The Xeon machine was well under 1/10th the cost of the Blade 1000.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
... very expensive terminals, I'll grant you that.
I'd say this is the misconception. The advantages of RISC over CISC for an equivalent clock speed CPU actually vary significantly based on the TYPE of workload. A good example: a while back a customer was complaining that compiles went twice as fast on their HP PC platform (1GHz CPU) than they did on their Sun platform (450MHz CPU). Compiles are almost entirely CPU bound. Found numbers point out that the SPEC ratings for the 1GHz CPU were about twice those of the 450MHz. What a surprise.
The thing is, the machine with the 450MHz CPU had 4 CPUs. If they had invested some effort in configuring a parallel make, the 450MHz machine with 4 CPU's would have approached being able to half the compile time of the single threaded make on the PC.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
>> although its fillrate and 38-bit colour may
.plan once.
.plan about this...
>> make it less desirable for animation
I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. The fillrate is just fine for a workstation, games generally are the only programs that need a high fillrate, memory bandwidth and size, and of course T&L are *much* more important. The 38 bit internal color is excellent, nicely comparing to SGI ( http://www.sgi.com/workstations/comparison.html ), and unmatched by 3dlabs. The bit-depth of the graphics card has nothing to do with the color rendering accuracy, which is usually 48 or 64 bits for high end stuff. Games really need high bit depth precision for multitexturing, which multiplies color errors. I think Carmack mentioned this in a
Nvidia will probably have 64 bit color in NV30, and 3dfx's rampage was supposed to have 52 bit color ( http://www.digit-life.com/articles/3dfxtribute/ ) Games start needing high bit depths when you have massive multi-texturing, which tends to multiply errors. I think Carmack had a
So was yours. Why was it modded down?
Where I work, we need computing power for 2 things:
1. Running builds
2. Simulating embedded processors (ARM, mcore) for testing our product.
We have a mix of Sun workstations and x86 linux boxen. We just got one of the new-ish SunBlade1000 for trial (single 900Mhz processor, 1GB RAM).
While the Sunblade kills the competition (1Ghz Pentium4 w/linux) in build times, it's actually slightly slower with the simulations (which were, ironically, developed natively for SUN architecture!)
So, before you think about getting one of these puppies for your own pad, you better find some published benchmarks specific to your needs. There's no magic bullet.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
There's full coverage here on Everything Unix, with pictures and discussion...
I am considering replacing an aging line of Sun boxes with Athlons running Linux. The port of my software from Solaris to Linux should not be too difficult, and besides, most software vendors support Linux these days anyway. It's really amazing how inexpensive and fast x86-style hardware is these days. I really wonder how Sun will be able to compete.
I can't wait for the AMD x86-64 chip designed by the former DEC Alpha engineers.
I've got an EPoX dual processor board that's been humming away for two and a half years now, and a couple of old Socket 7 boards overclocked to 500 MHz. They seem to be making a name for themselves, albeit very quietly.
I dunno about that graphics card. The website doesn't say anything about polygon rates, pixel fill rates or texel fill rates. Historically Sun graphics boards haven't been that great, especially when it comes to texturing. If they made halfway decent graphics they could have killed SGI years ago. But I guess they never figured 3-d graphics to big that big a market for them.
dave
D'ohhh! It's HERE!
You really know jack shit don't you...
Come on, why is Linux better than Solaris?
Speed, lets all point at the person thats NEVER tried Solaris OR Linux on SPARC's.
Prick, wanker, tosspot.
The low end really has eaten the high end in graphics hardware. Five years ago, the $1000 boards outperformed the $100 boards by an order of magnitude or more, because the high-end boards had hardware Z-buffers, geometry hardware (the 4x4 matrix multiplier), and hardware texture and lighting support. Today, low-end 3D boards have all that; the high-end boards just have a bit more of everything.
The cost probably reflects about $400 in parts, and millions in engineering cost divided by the few hundred of these boards Sun will sell. That's a losing business proposition.
Sun also announced a 24" high-resolution flat-panel monitor. Any info on that?
Very interresting If they Pull it out.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
This machine is awesome..but I wonder how many seti packets it can process in a day!?!?! That is the selling point!
-- Powered By Linux
Does 10 or 12 bits really make a difference over 8 bits? Of course it does. Most film work these days is rendered in either 12 bits, 10 bits logarithmic, or 16 bits. Think about it: in a dark movie theatre room, 256 levels of grey (for instance) is not a lot. And if that doesn't convince you, think about image manipulation: after a few multiplications and compositions, you'll end up with very little color resolution with 8 bits. And yes, these things are often done in hardware in the color buffer (eg flame).
Nono... my post was most certainly not on topic. It deserved to be modded down, hence the anon post.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these. If not a beowulf :)
cluster though, I'll settle for one. Suns Rule
CISC vs. RISC is irrelevant. Intel and AMD simply convert the CISC instructions to RISC-like instructions internally. The Intel/AMD cores are out-of-order superscalar designs just like the rest of them (well, Sparc is actually in-order but that's a whole different story).
It's funny how models containing the number 2000 sound immediately obsolete by now...
I personally feel there is a more interesting article that is linked to: http://www.sun.com/executives/realitycheck/headsup 020314.html
details MHz-vs-Speed differences. While not the most interesting for the well-informed, it's great for those who know that MHz doesn't necessarily = speed.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Hey, don't call my beautiful 100 a toy! :) Seriously, for me it's perfect, especially with a flat panel. And once my SunPCI card comes in in a few weeks, I can finally reduce my desktop to one keyboard and monitor and run in both unix and windows. Even though both are around 700mhz, nothing I do (run emacs, outlook, listening to mp3s, running a web browser, etc..) will even come close to taxing the CPUs.
_______
2B1ASK1
If someone is dumb enough to buy this stuff then go for it. But in a year you will see 64bit 900mhz machines going for $5000.
And they will run more than just Sun's less than impressive OS.
on this one. How the heck am I spose to find a bunch of "hardly used" sun sunblades on the cheap for personal use? In this new age of fiscal responsibility and limited cash, there is no way I can convince managment I need one of these as a MP3^H^H^Hsendmail server....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Damn it, this is only going to exacerbate the world-wide shortage of flesh-coloured pixels!! Damn you, Sun, damn you all to heck!!
*I* want the display: "Sun also unveiled its new 24-inch flat panel monitor, the first digital interface display in the industry to deliver 1920 X 1200 resolution at 60 Hz, fully supporting 2.3 million pixels."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
come on, at least click on the link!
sheesh.
(btw, 10-bit each RGB + 8-bit alpha)
local? that means it's only a short drive away to beat their asses up!
It breaks down as a big lie. In the article they claim to be the first to reach 30-bit color. Are they high? Have they even seen an SGI in the last 7 years?
Ace is wrong about one thing:
Currently, the XVR-1000 targets primarily the engineering and CAD markets, as opposed to 3D animation, given the rather limited fillrate. However, Sun intends to use the MAJC-5200 to scale the performance of its graphics solutions to higher levels in the future (as seen in this older roadmap), so we may yet see a solution attacking the 3D animation market at some point in the future.
The MAJC-5200 will improve geometry performance (number of triangles, floating point math required), not fillrate (number of pixels/texels shaded, integer math).
Animation requires better fillrate, and more MAJC-5200s won't provide that. MAJC-5200 *will* provide Sun with stronger geometry performance (FLOPS, remember?), which is just what Sun's core engineering and CAD markets most want. Lots of small triangles to accurately show the precise shape of things of digitally-created parts. Nothing about MAJC-5200 will strengthen Sun's penetration into new SGI markets per se. That'd be dependent on some other, presumably fill-rate enhancing, technology.
--LP
With some highly specialized systems they might've managed to up that a bit, but your average system is limited to 4 gb.
-
We have sun blade 100's at work, and they make great workstations. But being a rebel I wanted to put Linux on it. The only Linux distro with the best support was SUSE 7.3. Suse is a great distro, but they can only do so much without help from SUN.
Some major problems with linux on sunblades.
1. DMA doesnt work correctly.
2. GFX card drivers, only the basic onboard card is supported, dont get the high end elite cards.
3. Sound support is a hit or miss, sometimes it detects and loads the modules, havnt figured this out.
For a 1000 bux box, usb and firewire, dvd, takes PC memory for a SB100. If linux was truely supported, they would sell ALOT more.
Why would VNC make that better?
I am running Cadence everyday, 24 bit on Solaris no problem!
Did someone with limitless mod points change thier mind how they wanted this modded?
Stupid use for a $35k box I realize, but it does come with a DVD-ROM drive. Can you watch dvds with it or is that only for data-dvd purposes?
Where do they claim that? According to the SPECcpu website, a 1.05 GHz SPARC III Cu gets 537 base SPECint and 701 SPECfp, while a 2.2 GHz P4 easily beats it with 790 SPECint and 779 SPECfp.
Intel is way ahead in integer, and although the Sun catches up somewhat in FP, if you look at the individual results, it's entirely due to one massive spike on the art test. They recently figured out a (controversial) compiler trick that gave them nearly an order of magnitude increase on that one SPECfp test, and doubled their overall SPECfp score. Sun are known for their stability & scalability, but not their CPU speed.
Of course, if you have 106 of the things, that's different. But you'll be paying over US$4M for it, which isn't exactly workstation class anymore.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Hmm, Sun made a new computer. Doesnt this entire article belong in that little 468x60 iframe at the top of the page?
Liberty in your lifetime
If you're willing to spend the money to get the speed, the nVidia Quadro4 900XGL is the current SPECviewperf record holder, supports two displays (2048x1536 each, better than the XVR's dual 1280x1024), and costs well under half the XVR-1000. It also supports stereo viewing and a programmable vertex & pixel pipeline.
True, its DACs are 24 bits instead of 30 bits (SGI workstations are still the go there, with 36 bit RGB DACs), but the NV30 may change that. It also does multisampled anti-aliasing (currently 9-tap 4-sample, though older drivers did offer a 16-sample mode too).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Yes, it seems PA-RISC is really dead (unfortunately)! At least they'll will develop
2 new PA-RISC CPUs (PA8800 and PA8900).
But then (2003) they'll switch over to IA64.
Concerning the performance of the Itanium,
it's really bad in 32bit, and in 64bit
integer operations. But it's rather fast in 64 floating point operations (see SPEC2000).
IIRC it's faster than a 900 MHz UltraSparc III
in this area.
I want one of these to replace my Matrox G400 Dual Head MAX card. :~(
/too much/ of a hit from running in 32bit color VS running in 16bit color. Now days a lot of cards run better in 32bit color then they do in 16bit color. . . .)
Sad that it is not PC compatible, though I can guess as to why.
Sun should seriously think about getting into the PC hardware business for the high end proffesionals, there really is more potential to sell peripherals for the wide PC market then there is in trying to get everybody to switch over to their plateform. (how ever kick ass their machines may be.)
Ah, besides, a G400 MAX card that could do a bit more in the 3D arena from time to time would also be nice, hehe. I would seriously like to be able to run the occasional game at a resolution higher then 640x480@16bit color (well actualy I can run in 32bit color since the G400 was one of the first consumer cards to not take
Ah, and no the G500 is not what I am talking about. ^_^
Oh well, hopefuly the Kyro3 will be coming out Any Day Now(TM), though I do believe that it is a year or so behind its unofficaly leaked due date, LOL!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Interesting thing to mention is that the IA64 can execute PA-RISC instuctions.
Moreover IA64 is similar in some ways to PA-RISC (no wonder, since HP developed most of it).
So while PA-RISC architecture will be dead soon, there will be no big loss if the IA64 gets more mature (parisc will die in 2003).
> There are people who do visualisation who care about this stuff. As for the color, does anyone know if you can actually see any difference there ? I mean - 24 bit color is 16M colors ?
Yes, 24 Bit color is 16M colors, but that is *inadequate* when you start talking about color gradients. 24-bit color has 3 color channels, each with 8-bit depth. That allows for 256 shades of *primary colors*, but the eye can detect millions of shades. A higher color bit depth has less banding issues.
This is a ludicrous comparison because they are not specifying WHAT is being done to test these systems.
Sun systems, particularly those with the UltraSparc III processors, will blow away any other type of hardware architecture for floating point calculations in processor-intensive applications that are written for the UltraSparc III chipset. This has been proven time and time and time again; however, the tests that most of the press runs are basic mathematical or graphical tests in a "one size fits all" fashion which is GROSSLY unfair to Sun.
I recently worked with a major electrical components company that was trying to compare the SunBlade 1000 at 950 MHz with newer 1.8 GHz PCs. Their results ended up with roughly the same results; however, the Sun still eked out as being slightly faster. But even the people who ran the test said that it was not a fair comparison because the application was designed and compiled for the SuperSparc and HyperSparc line of processors!
So here was a SunBlade 1000 @ 950 Mhz running an old, archaic 8-bit application that still ended up being faster than a 1.8 GHz Intel Xeon system running the same application for a 32-bit Windows app. If the application was compiled to take adantage of the USIII's architecture, it would have blown away the Xeon machine like an Indy car to a Yugo.
I'll never forget the day that the idiots at Dell ran a full-page advertisement comparing their newest server to the Sun E450 and bragging about how much faster it was. You know what they used to test? An OpenGL clocking machanism with Dell having the newest video card while giving the E450 a measly Creator 3D. Oh, yeah. That's fairness in testing.
Sun will never EVER get a balanced speed review in the media because pratcially all tests use a generic "one size fits all" method of testing.
NEWS FLASH! The Sun Blade line was never meant to suit all, so generic tests that are run on a Sun Blade can not and should not be taken at face value.
3DRAM has been around 4-5 years or so. It is nice technology, but to answer your rhetorical question, adding logic operations to memory adds significantly to the expense of the RAM. (It's a non-commodity part made by Mitsubishi, and at the very least must be tested, and I think manufactured, in custom ways.)
It also reduces memory flexibility; you can't just take some of that huge texture memory you have and start using it as the frame+Z buffer of a dual-head display for example, unless the right amount of 3D RAM was spec'ed in the hardware design to begin with.
Also, at least in the early days, some blending modes were supported and others weren't.
Reducing Z buffer bandwidth is pretty nice though, don't get me wrong. But most of the industry has stuck with the volume economics of more conventional RAM types.
--LP
With the help of Evans and Sutherland, the VREngine/HD10 board uses 48bit (12bit per component) frame buffer, even before Sun's new card is released. If that's not enough, wait until the Studio-on-a-chip 4300.
This new workstation is really an old workstation re-packaged with an old chip. Sun Microsystems canceled the MAJC project and shifted all its resources to development of the performance-lagging UltraSPARC in 2001. Sun was losing money and could not fund all the projects.
At that point, however, the first-generation MAJC had already be fabricated. So, in order to salvage what had already been done, Sun placed that MAJC chip into a graphics card. Can you say "marketing hype"? That graphics card is now in this "new" old workstation.
There are no more MAJC chips. It's development has been terminated.
All this talk about how this "new" Sun workstation will excel at things like oil exploration is a tad ridiculous. Currently, the #1 hardware platform for oil exploration is Linux running on the Power4, Power3, x86, or the G6 (the "old" mainframe processor by IBM). Check this article, titled "IBM to spend $1 billion on Linux in 2001". IBM sold a Linux-powered supercomputer (sporting a Power3) to Shell Oil for exploration of oil and gas.
So you're saying: out-of-order superscalar = RISC?
Indeed, both the Power4 and the Pentium 4 (P4) significantly outperform an UltraSPARC III. Just visit the SPEC web site and the web site of the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) . The performance results at those web sites show that the UltraSPARC III significantly underperforms against the competition. For this very reason, Sun is refusing to run Linux on the UltraSPARC III. Running Linux on UltraSPARC III would allow an even more direct, head-on comparison between the UltraSPARC III and the Power4 or P4. Same OS (Linux). Yet, Power4 and P4 outperform UltraSPARC III. There would be no way for Sun to say, "Well, Solaris causes the UltraSPARC III to run slower than the competition because Solaris is using the extra CPU cycles to give you that much more reliability."
As the official line, Sun Microsystems derides with the SPEC benchmarks and the TPC benchmarks as being unfair and unrepresentative of the "real world". How can any company utter such asinine comments? Both SPEC and TPC are fair, reputable organizations that have set forth to provide a fair and unbiased means to compare a range of computer systems from various companies. You might say that both SPEC and TPC are the "Consumer Reports" of the server market.
To look at something that is really asinine, I highly recommend Big Blue Smoke , which is a childish web site that Sun established to ridicule IBM. Sun must be getting really desperate.
Although the Xeon is 32-bit in some areas, it is not 32-bit across the board.
The P3 Xeon processors use a 36-bit address space for memory allowing access to all 64GB of memory at any time.
But can I install Windows XP on it?
I can't find any information about if it supports XP or not. Which is a bit bad, because if it only supports W2K then I'd rather wait until it supports XP right.
Wonder how a game of CS would do on this mean machine.
Later guys
Simple example; apply to any scientific field you can think of.
Open a big matrix of size 20,000x20,000. Keeping each element as 1 byte, this will take you 4GB of memory. 32 bit systems can't handle this much memory for one process. You need a 64-bit system with lots of physical memory.
Looks like the two may be comparable. The Fuel costs about $11,000 for a R14K 600 model. I think that the Fuels v12 graphics may have the edge here, but for slightly lower end stuff, I can see companies going with Sun (We know they'll be around in 5 years) instead of SGI for some of their MCAD stuff.
You will also find that most of the work going into intel/amd cpu`s is actually aimed at spec benchmarks, whereas the sun hardware is designed to actually be used for real world tasks, and to perform those tasks reliably.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
What Sun gives you is a bit more performance per processor, or a bit more performance per multiprocessor box. But that is not usually a compelling argument, since big computations are usually distributed anyway, and it's still cheaper to build a 200 processor Beowulf cluster than to buy a 100 processor SPARC box. (The Beowulf probably also gives you better I/O and memory bandwidth overall.)
64bit processing is not compelling enough to cause a lot of people to switch. With cheap memory, that will change over the next couple of years, but then AMD and Intel will have mature 64bit offerings.
Sorry, but Sun has been steadily going downhill. They just don't have much of a market anymore.
No, I'm saying that it would be extremely difficult to implement an out-of-order superscalar execution engine when your operations are not simple.
I am saying the instruction set architectures (ISAs) don't effect the internal micro-architecture like they used to because we've figured out how to do translation for typical CISC ISAs. Of course doing this translation will cost you in silicon area.
...what kind of info do you want?
:)
Sells for approx. $4500.00...Sun is supposed to be taking orders now. This thing looks like it should be on a Star Trek movie set. It has dual source capability, with twin inputs for each source. Total of 4 at one time. Source 1 is for either digital or analog computer video and Source 2 is for composite or S-Video. You can choose between PIP or PBP (pic-by-pic), which splits the screen down the middle. There is a small retractable camera pad built into the top of the unit, and a 4-port USB hub as well.
1920 X 1200 is the primary/native mode. Digital connection is DVI-D. Controls include one-touch brightness adjust; Zoom/Pan; PIP/PBP; Menu Position; and various adjustments for color control, depending on the source.
The monitor uses a unique dual hinge setup with an aluminum stand that allows you to tilt the panel horizontally for access to connections, rather than working from the rear. It includes a multi-language OSD (menus), and auto-adjust for setup under analog computer video. The screen can be set for 1:1; 4:3; or 16:10. Graphics art pros will want to resize (not use 1:1) so they can retain a proper working aspect ratio for images, etc. Comes with a 30 page Owner's Guide CD in 11 languages. This thing is a monster...when you have one on your desk, expect to spend most of your time doing demos
haha, Hows that Linux cluster in your Closet running kid?
Actually, our Linux Beowulf cluster is in our machine room, next to a (now unused and defunct) Sun Enterprise server.
Read the press article bozo. This is a $15K workstation not a $400K IR.
You can't compare a simpler 32-bit chip to a 64-bit chip. Look at Itanic err Itanium. Its integer performance is embarrasing and even floating performance can't come close to the Sun Blade 2000's. Intels done a great job with MHz hype but in the real world, its not just MHz that counts-just ask AMD, Apple or Sun. System bandwidth, reliability and scalability are king. Find me a high end compute user running complex datasets on P4 other than the consumer market and you'll be surprised.
The "Non-Stop" line is interesting though. This is the old Tandem product line. Tandem specialized in systems that never went down -- even if some of the hardware was broken. Not that impressive nowadays, but Tandem dominated the field 20 years ago. After the '89 quake, Tandem got a service call from a bank whose mainframe server had been knocked over by the first shock -- but was still running. So please tell us, how do we bring it back upright without shutting it down?