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Sun To Use AMD Mobile Processor In Blade Servers
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like AMD is finally making some headway into supplying 1st tier business computer makers which the announcement that Sun will use their chips in upcoming blade servers. Apparently CNET can't help but speculate what this means for AMD's 64 bit Hammer."
This is VERY interesting news since at this moment Sun is holding their Chip Conference where the future of Sparc is being discussed.
After years of touting its own UltraSparc processors as sufficient for all manner of computing, Sun last year bowed to market realities and accepted general-purpose Intel-compatible computers into its server line.
I *think* I know how the market will respond to this as far as AMD is conccernd, I'll be keeping an eye on what this does/means for sun.
...they are also making an UltraSPARC server blade.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Solaris is losing ground and purpose every day to Linux. The Ultraspac processor is dieing as well. Java is plauged IMO by terrible VMs, while C# and other proprietary languages are coming out/gaining ground.
I think Sun SERIOUSLY needs to reconsider its place in the market and drop products/get direction. I think a serious partnership with oracle is in order, or putting more behind Java.
Well, Cringely is entitled to his opinion, but I doubt Sun will be going anywhere for quite some time. I can see them getting replaced with x86 on the low end, but somehow I don't think x86 boxes will be replacing machines like the E10K or the E15K any time soon. But I can see where Sun will end up a smaller, humbler company as a result.
Truthfully, I don't think this will do much for AMD one or the other. Sun is just marketing these things to prevent current customers from looking elsewhere. You can be pretty sure the main emphasis will still be on Sparc.
I've had a number of discussions with folks about this over the last few years.
1) Sun can still afford it.
2) They gain instant credibility in the x86 market.
3) AMD gains credibility in the enterprise (luring really big enterprise customers with real service)
4) Sun gets 2 of the leading 64-bit processor platforms, plus some control over the Windows hardware platform.
5) Sun gets to own their chip manufacturer (rather than rely on stinky TI and Fujitsu for the Sparc line).
6) Sun can control the cost of its Linux platform.
Do, it Sun. . . you know you want to. . . buy them.
Because I doubt M$ would honor the 64 bit windows deal if Sun purchased AMD or maybe Sun could use that to pursue more legal manuvering.
XP2400+, an Asus A7N8X Deluxe, 1Gb DDR333, and a 120Gb HDD. I'd like to see any current Sun workstation beat this combo
I guess it all depends on what your terms are. Three years ago at work I was working with a simulation that took about 5GB of ram to run (1 process). All of the 2 year old Sun workstations we have now could run this. Sun had equipment, what, 7 or 8 years ago that could. Your PC still can't.
Your PC could no doubt render a beautify, a kick-ass Quake 3 scene. But it would probably suck wind trying to do certain types of CAD displays. It can be very different 3D work from what a PC graphics card is good at (textures & shading). Of course, for what its worth, Sun's new XVR-4000 graphics card can take up to 1GB of memory!
Your PC will be a lot cheaper, and kick-butt. However there are some things a Sun could do that it just couldn't, or would do poorly.
I've been watching Ebay for deals on Sun equipment and have never seen something that seems like a good deal.
It all depends what you are looking for.
Also, 64 bit chips are not ready for the mainstream market yet. They need more testing, analyzation, and intrepration with an unbiased group of persons as the sample, to make reliable predictions.
Yeah, no one makes 64 bit chips that are ready to use.
Don't blame me, I get all my opinions from my Ouija board.
If you think that Sunfire's and Z series machines are going to disapear from datacenter's during the tenure of anyone reading this you are flying in the face of history. Big dedicated machines that do NOT crash and which have features Intel and AMD servers will still be lusting after in 20 years will probably always have a purpose and a place. This is especially true for the Z series where the people who implement them don't care about the fastest a machine can pump operations out, they care about the slowest something will get done. Trust me your bank wants to know that as long as they have everything setup right that the complex of Z series machines WILL finish computing interest and doing balance transfers before the end of the day. These people would go apeshit if their jobs reacted like an overloaded webserver!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Sorry, it's not an outright lie. You will never pay retail price for a Sun server. You need to compare "actual Sun price" quote from a reseller in order to see what you're really getting.
Also, according to the Dell web page when I add 4 Xeon processors which only have 2MB cache, and 4 GB of RAM, the price is now over $25k.
The V480 uses 1.2Ghz UltraSparc III processors with a massive 8MB of onboard cache. I'm sorry, but your wimpy little Xeon will not keep up with these processors.
Also, keep in mind a major selling point of Sun servers: ECC across all data paths. Don't expect Dell to ever give you that. You might have ECC memory, but what about the memory bus that connects to that memory? No ECC error checking/correction. This is a major differentiator between Sun and Intel systems, and one that unfortunately the Slashdot crowd doesn't understand at all.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon