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Sun May Use Opteron Chips

Runnin_Rob writes "CNET Nets.com is reporting that Sun is likely (not definite, but likely) to start using AMD's Opteron in the near future. The article also discusses how Linux is pushing for greater acceptability of Solaris x86 because 'All of the sudden it is OK to (put) something other than Windows.'"

16 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. opteron form factor by E.+T.+Alveron · · Score: 4, Informative

    Has anyone heard of commodity motherboards for this chip/chipset?
    It's great that Sun and AMD are together on this, but I'm itching to build a box myself :)

    1. Re:opteron form factor by bsharitt · · Score: 2, Informative

      The desktop version won't come out until September, the Opteron is mainly for servers and workstations.

    2. Re:opteron form factor by 10Ghz · · Score: 2, Informative
      It's a smart move to replace the relatively expensive Intel CPU's in Sun's low-end cobalt servers and the like with cheaper and better-performing (but hot, which is a bitch for Sun and their amazing RAS -- reliability, accessibility, and serviceability requirements) AMD CPU's.


      Intel-chips aren't really any cooler than AMD-chips.
      --
      Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
  2. Re:Not likely by E.+T.+Alveron · · Score: 5, Informative

    that's fine for n-way servers, but the high-end workstation market may benefit from a 64bit cpu.
    there are already plenty of dual Itanium 'stations available for $10k and up.
    I bet AMD will undercut Intel's price for 64bit CPU by a lot.

  3. Re:Not likely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Xeon = 32-bit; Opteron = 64-bit; n00b!

  4. Re:windows 64 by Chokolad · · Score: 2, Informative

    >>>huh? when was microsoft going to port to amd's 64 bit processor? they seem to be going out of their way to dis amd.
    ======
    do you have any facts supporting your claims about microsoft dissing AMD?
    I am seeing quite the opposite picture. Windows is running on AMD64 already
    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8678

  5. Re:Dumb statement by thadeusPawlickiROX · · Score: 2, Informative
    I think you've read this comment out of context. In the description posted for the article, it seems out of context as well.

    The point that the quote should be making is that it is possible to purchase servers on the x86 platform with an alternative OS installed, not a preinstalled Windows. That's what it seems like, I don't think it's an outright MS bashing, just the fact that Sun is part of the alternative x86 movement.

    --
    take off every sig for great justice
  6. sea/saw by simpl3x · · Score: 2, Informative

    microsoft, even after near perjury publicly stated that they would not support amd's 64 bit processor (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/17019.html ). if they have finally come to publicly display the version of windows everybody knew that they had (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/17031.html ) produced it was likely because itanic is not the prize intel was sure it would become (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20021226 .html).

  7. Re:I wonder... by user32.ExitWindowsEx · · Score: 2, Informative

    Dunno...but Cray seems to think they can do 16,000 CPU setups using Opterons.
    Mabye HyperTransport is just *that* good.

    --
    "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
  8. Re:sun needs to drop sparc by randyest · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sun is losing market share and fast

    Oh, really? Who'd you ask to learn this erroneous fact? Maybe your office uber geek or whoever fed you this line of crap can fix your mouse driver, but apparently he's a bit behind on the industry. You (or whoever you're parroting) obviously have no idea what you're talking about.

    The latest research showed a surge in Sun's market share between the last quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002.
    (http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17758.html)

    The overall Unix server market grew 11 percent, from $5.9 billion in the first quarter of 1999 to $6.6 billion in the same period in 2000, according to research firm International Data Corp. Of that, Sun kept the top spot, increasing its share from 28 percent to 32 percent, with revenue of $2.1 billion in the first quarter of 2000.
    (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-242350.html?legacy= cnet)

    Oh, maybe you meant internationally -- no wait, that doesn't work either:

    Sun Microsystems has increased its market share in the RISC/UNIX server market in India in Q1 2002, according to IDC. Sun's RISC/UNIX server revenue market share in India grew to 48.4% in Q1 of 2002 from the 34.6% achieved in the full year 2001.
    (http://www.ciol.com/content/news/repts/102070105. asp)

    Before you try to complain about the dates, show me more recent data. (I have some, and it's even better for Sun that what you can find on the web right now, but I can't share my Peddie report legally -- go buy your own : http://www.jonpeddie.com/index.shtml ).

    Better yet, try to explain to me what Sun does and exactly which market share they are interested in. Knowing the SPARC acronym is a simple google click away -- that demonstrates nothing, but I guess it is getting you a bit of karma; no respect from the clueful, though.

    It says a lot when you take the top of the line sparc chip, and put it up against a chip a quarter of the price that kicks its butt.

    I'm sorry, what machine kicks a Sun SPARC's butt in the apps they give a damn about? I don't think Sun cares if your Intel box gets more fps in Quake3 than a SPARC. You do realize Sun's are 64-bit machines, right? Do you know what that means? Or why so many corporations with deep pockets care? No, you don't. When's the last time this phantom butt-kicking CPU worked on 16GB of RAM or more?

    not every case calls for a 24 cpu machine

    And not every garage calls for (or can afford) a Ferrari. Duh. But the really profitable ones do. DO you have any idea what the difference in profit between a 1-CPU (or 2!) server and an enterprise server? No, of course you don't.

    Get a clue or STFU.

    --
    everything in moderation
  9. Re:Solaris 9, the best Unix of 1995 by randyest · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hey, no offense, but Solaris isn't designed for amateur install. It's not Linux. People that can afford a Sun box can afford a skilled sysadmin.

    It will let you install/remove anything you want. You're supposed to have a clue. Some people want/need to remove a critical component and replace it with their own flavor. Sorry it didn't work out for you, but it's really better for you that it didn't, apparently.

    The Sun gnome is still beta. Not supported, not tested, not done. Hang tight. Sun doesn't slop out crap before it's ready (as production stuff) -- people count on them too much. Too much money and rep at stake.

    Latest Solaris' come with GNU goodies, including apache, perl, gcc, . . . you did check that 2nd "extras" CD, right?

    --
    everything in moderation
  10. Sun Java openness = Java Community Process by joelparker · · Score: 2, Informative
    Sun has yet to let anyone besides Sun itself have any say over Java.

    Actually, Sun works with a wide range of developers and companies
    to improve Java using the Java Community Process

    The JCP has hundreds of members listed here

    I personally believe the JCP does an admirable job.
    Does it have room for improvement? Of course.
    Is it working? For me the answer is yes--
    Java gets steadily faster and more useful.

    What do you think is a better model
    for extending and improving a language?

    Cheers, Joel

    From the JCP homepage:
    the Java Community Process is the way the Java platform evolves.
    It's an open organization of international Java developers and licensees
    whose charter is to develop and revise Java technology specifications,
    reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits.

  11. Re:Solaris 9, the best Unix of 1995 by SN74S181 · · Score: 4, Informative

    If he booted off the 'Install' CD and got mired in Webstart, he had already lost. That appears to be something the Sun engineers tricked up for marketing to keep them safe and out of the way. To install Solaris properly you boot off CD1, which is also bootable, and it gives you a regular unkludged Solaris install.

    Stuff like that is detailed in a valuable 'short cut' document from Sun, the wonderful Solaris 80/20 Guide, officially 'Solaris OE Guide for New System Administrators: The 20% of Solaris knowledge that solves 80% of your needs'.

    If there is any chance of you ever wanting to explore Solaris, download and archive this document now . It's a real hassle, I just found out, to locate it on the docs.sun website, so bookmark this. It's one hell of a good cribsheet.

  12. not exactly what I heard on their briefing... by boaworm · · Score: 3, Informative
    I think you are missing one important product, even though you might be right about lowend servers. I attended a Sun marketing meeting a week back, where they showed off all products to come in within a year or so, and I remember the Opterons. Although they did not mention them in lowend servers but rather in blade tech. 12 dual opteron blade servers in a 3U "rack-in-a-rack", perfect for fast calculations.


    So, expect AMD CPUs in blade configurations but not in servers, the SPARC arch is still going strong in SUNs business model (dont remember any AMD cpu's in any server models actually).

    --
    Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
    Aristotele
  13. Re:Solaris Vs. Mickeysoft. by pmz · · Score: 2, Informative

    Who is being more open?

    Sun. Any day of the week, any week of the year, and any year of the millenium.

    SPARC, copyright SPARC International, Inc. Licenses $99.

    Java, licensed by none other than Sun's biggest competitors: IBM, BEA, Microsoft (historically). Even GCC compiles Java source code and has some of the APIs implemented.

    There's also OpenOffice.org (the significance of OpenOffice.org is only beginning to show itself), NFS (interoperability), System V/BSD/POSIX (again, interoperability), and membership on various WWW standards committees. If Sun is so closed, then why do Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all run on every recent Sun architecture (sun4c, sun4m, and sun4u)? How do they manage to support an impressive number of Sun-branded peripherals?

    Does Microsoft allow you to attach a bundled debugger (mdb) to the running system kernel? Did Microsoft allow downloads of the system source code that can be actually be compiled (Sun did this with Solaris 8)?

    While Sun is unambiguously a profit-motifivated corporation, I've heard them say more than once they prefer to compete on implementation than lock-in via proprietary interfaces. This is why BEA is currently a bigger J2EE vendor than Sun itself! This is why Fujitsu can sell servers that can sometimes scale better and smell more like mainframes than Sun's servers.

    In review, Sun is more open than: most corporations in existence.

  14. Re:sun needs to drop sparc by Vaystrem · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Oh, really? Who'd you ask to learn this erroneous fact? Maybe your office uber geek or whoever fed you this line of crap can fix your mouse driver, but apparently he's a bit behind on the industry. You (or whoever you're parroting) obviously have no idea what you're talking about." "Get a clue or STFU"

    Ok I Did.
    http://news.com.com/2100-1010-990662.html
    F ebruary 2003 (1 year newer than your more recent article)

    HP and IBM each had a market share of 30 percent, or $1.5 billion in revenue, of the $5 billion worldwide Unix server market in the fourth quarter, research company IDC said. Unix specialist Sun had a market share of 28 percent, with $1.4 billion. Sun, though, remained the top Unix server seller for the entire year, with $6 billion of the $18.7 billion total market, IDC said.