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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 was on Ars Technica today. Check it out:m l
http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/1046147898.ht
A somewhat different interpretation of the meaning?
This is VERY interesting news since at this moment Sun is holding their Chip Conference where the future of Sparc is being discussed.
Now we can wait another 5 years for the new blade servers.
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.
Cringely seems to think that Sun won't last long though, so will there be long-term benefit to AMD?
...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?"
Sun wants 64 bit capability to be a differentiator for Solaris. So they will not rush to use AMD's 64 bit offerings.
OTOH who is going to try to make a go of AMD/64? For sure not any of the system vendors who have commited to IA64. That means no Dell, no IBM, no HP. So there is an opportunity for Sun.
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Sun still talks out of both sides of it's mouth. In one breath they make claims that the UltraSPARC cpu is the most competitive CPU known to mankind, and in the next breath they're releasing non SPARC based systems, LX50 (Intel XEON) and AMD based blades.
Sun CPU engineers are way behind their competition. They're so far behind that their competition is litteraly lapping them in terms of price and performance.
Try and find any decent Sun server benchmarks that prove that their gear is competitive.
You can actually find benchmarks that one can make the direct comparison of an 8 way UltraSPARC 3 to a 4 way Intel Xeon MP! And the Intel based solution is faster and costs 50% or less.
Sun by virtue of their ego is becoming a boutique server/workstation vendor. Think SGI, this is likely Sun's future or worse if they don't start laying more staff off.
Businesses are realizing this, and this is why Sun is taking such a beating.
Nope, Its the smell of your Karma burning.
Is it just me, or is 64-bit computing, the hammer, and AMD getting a lot of press for the past few days? I wonder if this is the start of a big media blitz.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I was just configuring Debian on a E450 dev box to bring our servers more in line with our production servers.
What does this mean for Sun? No one knows for sure. Is it the beginning of the end or a stop gap measure until their new processors come out in 2004. The ones all the analysts are so hyper over, not the USIV or USV but the Afara procs.
But what does this mean for AMD? Now every enterprise can ask the question, why not go with AMD? Sun uses their procs... why shouldn't we use them also.
This is just good news for AMD and may be a kick in the groin for Intel to wake up to the 64 bit to the desktop question.
Your mom always said, a PB&J is better than nothing, and God is nothing, is a PB&J better than God?
Honestly, I don't even know why that is funny here. I really don't think BSD is dead, and I have nothing against it . . . Slashdot is just really starting to effect me in strange ways.
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For instance, the other day I was making a little presentation to my boss and suddenly used the:
1.
2. . .
3. Profit!!
Step list . .
slashdot is going to get me unemployed and single.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
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.
They'd use AMDs to compete aggressively with IA64 offerings. As far as I'm concerned, this is Sun's only pathway to survival. Linux is killing their lowend Unix business. They should embrace Hammers and push the crap out of Linux boxes. I personally think they should put out Windows boxes as well but that's uncool to say here.
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.
Whaa? I recently bought a SunFire 480 (definitely the "low end") for work, came out to about $23K, just for shits and giggles I just went over to dell.com and priced out a similarly configured (more or less the same, the processors probably have a bit more horse power to them) PowerEdge 6650, which came out to $22,780.
Oh sure, I could've gotten a 2650 with considerably faster CPUs and 50% more RAM dirt cheap (and in fact, we just purchased a couple of those as well), but for some reason if I need it to be expandable beyond 2 processors and six gigs of RAM it's just nowhere as thrifty all of a sudden. Not to mention that with the 26XX's the thinking is pretty much: "If it breaks - we chuck it and get a new one." and you can't really afford that for all applications.
as Linux tends to make huge leaps and bounds in a short time while Sun usually just tweaks a few interest points at a time
You do realize that you've just made the case for Sun (hands down) for anyone who is actually in a position to make purchasing decisions for a company? Explain to me the difference between "improves daily" and "has a long way to go".
Mind you, I love Linux and use it extensively (at work and at home), but that is no reason to just make things up about Sun's software or hardware.
sic transit gloria mundi
Sun has used AMD CPU's before, although not in the primetime in their servers. They did use them in the SunPCi cards for workstations. I still have one.
The reason that Sun used AMD (the K6-2, I believe) instead of a Pentium, like they did with the SunPCi 2, is that at the time it made more sense price-wise. I see no difference here.
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
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.
that will produce enough heat to be worthy of its namesake.
my pet machine
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