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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.'"
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
As my best friend put it: Solaris would be Microsoft if they could. They have certainly pulled monopolistic wannabe stuff in the past, but have had to back off of it because of their lack of market share.
I have always had the mind that if I had to choose between the two, I'd rather have a monopoly that was Unix-based.
CNET Nets.com?
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
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.
Xeon = 32-bit; Opteron = 64-bit; n00b!
Another way of saying that interest in the SPARC architecture is waning.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
After reading the previous article about gas clouds, space, and all kinds of astronomy stuff, I misinterpreted this title to mean someone had discovered good old Sol up there was powered by AMD Opterons.
Took half a second for me to realise they don't quite run THAT hot.
Sun is *likely* (*not definite*, *but likely*) to *start* using AMD's Opteron in the *near future* Did an accountant write this?
Not at my workplace. We're mostly a Solaris shop, but it's not buying us much. We have to load new boxen chock full of GNU software to make them comfortable to work on.
Much of our software is Java, C or Perl-based. The Solaris JavaVM sucks donkey dicks (it's no better than linux, anyway), we use GCC (not Forte), and our Perl is portable to linux with a single scp.
Solaris buys us performance on machines with more than 16 CPUs. But we don't have any! Anything that needs serious cycles goes on the S/390 or AS/400s.
When the leases come up, it will be interesting to see how many Solaris boxes go out, and linux boxes come in.
Actually read the posts? I guess you're new around here.
Ya, I guess all these guys that finally quit CompUSA and get real tech jobs are seeing a whole new world. Honestly, did they think the entire world was living with the same misconception?
Im not going to go MS bashing, because quite honestly Im pro-MS, but really, thats a truly stupid statement to make, especially if you have worked in real data centers.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Many pointy hairs are also awakening to the fact that Linux is evolving way faster then any previous OS in history. This realization is forcing many of them to position themselves in order to benefit from Linux. They are starting by replacing all of their low to medium-level extremely expensive UNIX solutions with Linux implementations, and waiting for Linux to overtake UNIX on the top tier. This saves them tons "in the meantime" and prepares them for the eventual replacement of their high-end solutions. Sun has to know that this scenario is inevitable and play along. Pride will only get you but so far.
McNealy has been fighting Linux for far too long, calling it "just another tool". I got news for you, all OS's are tools. Only this tool here can save your ass a ton while doing everything that every other tool promises to do on the low and medium ends.
Right now, Linux is "it" - and it shows no signs of slowing up. Microsoft makes their money off desktops and their office suite. UNIX makes money off stability and power. Stability and power is what the open source developers aim to improve. UNIX beware - evolve or perish, because you're next..
mean that Sun would probably phase out Intel chips in the next 1-2 years in its lower end Linux systems. They will move entirely to AMD for their 32 bit lower end Linux and 64-32 bit mid level systems.
Given that so many companies: Sun, IBM, Dell want to increase their 64 bit x86 offerings, Microsoft *will* have to work double time to speed up their version of 64 bit Windows.
Already 5 varities of Linux, 3 BSD's, IBM's DB2, CA Ingres and Oracle have confirmed firm support for Opteron. Delaying Windows for this segment will mean that as Opteron becomes popular in the coming months, Linux will become the dominant operating system. This will mean a further boost to Linux.
A few months back Sandia National labs signed up to put 10,000 Opteron's in a supercomputer named Red storm which is supposed to become operational in 2004.
>>>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
I meant to say that Solaris wants to be Windows.
That's easy to do. Just use a Sparc with dodgy l2 cache.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
*Not counting the times a careless sysadmin knocked the heatsink off of a CPU and fried the chip. We've been told that they are working on more foolproof mounting clips.
**As long as you avoid the E25Ks with the Soyo Super 733FX3 mobos with the Via 8N933A eXtreeme chipsets. Those sux. Flakey as all shit. Oh, and make sure you only buy brand-name memory.
***The winning benchmarks were done using a system with custom aftermarket watercoolers running Opteron 4700++'s overclocked to 6974++. The transaction data was not completely free of corrupted bytes.
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).
Have you ever heard of these machines called...ahh...what was it...ummm...APPLE!?
Seriously though, OSX is already a *nix, and from what I understand you can run a number of flavours of Linux ( Yellow Dog is one...) in/under/over/though OSX which means you can still do things like use the dvd reader/burner and use the firewire port etc, etc. If you're not with in Apple's price market, you could always buy an old cheapy one and run Linux on it without the OSX overhead. Or even build your own.
Also it looks like you would have the option of 64bit architecture within 6 months or so (courtesy of IBM's PPC 970). And although there wouldn't be any 64bit apps to start with, how long would it take the Linux masses to fix that?
ps - please don't give me any grief like "we don't need 64bit - it's only for GODS - not meer mortals like us" because you people can just go a use your AI/particle renderer/speech recognition/hand writing recognition/bloody mp3-4 player on that AT286 over there - ok?
How are they going to build 106 cpu boxes with opterons?
Maybe somebody more familiar with the architecture can chime in here...?
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
I've been following the opteron's progress for quite a while now (3-4 months). Well, to be honest, I type "AMD" in the google news search and read anything that comes up everyday before I actually start doing any work. While SUN seems the be the largets potential supporter, Newisys, MSI, Appro International, smaller MB makers, and various vendors do seem to be giving good support. Even Microsoft has a working (I've seen some screen shots of a beta) version of windows for x86-64 called "Anvil" (Not yet released of course). Linux is up to speed, RedHat and SuSe and I don't know who all else has support. The chip isn't even out yet! I think things are going to work out for AMD and the Opteron/Athlon64. So far it seems like a good product, and I can say for meself at least that the delays only make me want one more.... If SUN jumps on the AMD wagon from the start as it looks like they're planning on, I think it may be what saves them.
w00t for AMD!
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
So, I haven't really used Solaris much since the 2.5 days. I decided to give Solaris 9 a go on my Sun Ultra2 box. Guys, installing and setting up Solaris once will teach how far Linux has come. The fancy "webstart" install starts with an xterm with a text based disk partition tool. I haven't seen something like that since on Linux since 1999 (and the distro that did it was acknowledged pure crapola). Package selection during install was horrible. Not to mention it let me remove something that cuased kernel panics so I had to reinstall with a default package set. Once you get it installed, you got get it up to date. Of course, Sun's main update system is the "look around on our web site and pray what you download is for your version" like Windows and MacOS had 10 years ago. There is also a utility called patchpro with withh automagically download patches and apply them to your system. Of course, it comes in a tarball, requires you to alter your path, and finds weak excuses not to install patches thus requiring you to do a bunch of research to find out the reason. Installing patches on Solaris could only get better if they sent them to you on 9 track tape. Seriously, I was a big user of AIX, Solaris, and HPUX back in the mid nineties and I am sad to say that for Solaris not much has changed. I downloaded the Sun branded gnome2 for Solaris 9. Ich! Ximian really fleeced these guys. You get a clunky dual-toolbar desktop thats actually not much better than CDE. Someone sould have told Sun that gnome was all about the apps. In short, I still think of Linux sometimes as the distro I first installed by picking kernels with the correct CD driver to make boot floppies with back in 94. However, Linux has gotten to the point where its install and administration are superior to windows! However, the big Unixes are still behind the curve and wondering why they're losing market share.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
Perhaps Sun feels sufficiently compelled by Hypertransport's effectiveness in producing powerful multiprocessor systems easily and cost-effectively. Three HyperTransport buses per Opteron, use one to interface to the system bus and the other two to interconnect with other processors. No other processor has HyperTransports like this, specifically optimized for multiprocessor configurations.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Sun is losing market share and fast
= cnet)
. asp)
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
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
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
You apparently intend your post as a warning to Sun that it should give up on its existing technologies (sparc,solaris) and join what you perceive as the "linux pack" of IBM, HP, etc. But if you look at your own arguments and reconsider them, the case is far from clear that what you suggest is in fact wise.
Consider IBM. Sure, IBM is selling hardware with Linux loaded on it. But they haven't given up on their Power chips as you seem to imply that Sun should its Sparc series. Why aren't you wagging your tongue at IBM for that? And AIX? What of that? IBM certainly hasn't abandonded it, and I wouldn't expect it to any time soon. So all that IBM is really offering is yet another operating system choice, in this case Linux, and it meets your approval. It doesn't necessarily do anything unique there.
And what of HP? You say that HP has proven that they can sell Linux servers in the absence of huge corporate support. What on earth are you talking about? HP is one of the largest computer companies on the planet. If they can't make a go of selling Linux boxes, who can? I will also point out that HP hasn't dumped RISC for X86, but instead went to expensive Itanium, and has a long roadmap for HP/UX. Sure they will sell you a Linux box, but they would prefer to sell you something else.
You assert that Linux is evolving way faster then any previous OS in history. The only reason that is possible is because it has had so far to go to catch up. To catch up it has generally traveled trails blazed by others, and relied upon the kindness of volunteers and donations from kinfolk (JFS,XFS,etc.). Sure Linux is causing the traditional Unix vendors to react and jump a bit.... just like BSD did to AT&T Unix, GNU did to Unix, the various Unix groups and companies did to each other over time. But big unix companies are still here and adapting.
Cost? I've got Sun equipment that cheaper than my Dells, and suits my particular needs better. Cost/performance? Depending upon the day and the metric you've got a better argument. But it doesn't matter how cheap it is, or what the price/performance is if it doesn't cut the mustard. PC and linux aren't even close to being a universal solution. Check back in 3 years after Opteron is well entrenched, Linux gets some more time in the rock polisher, and companies have figured out which direction Linux on X86 is heading: Intel vs AMD. Till then, confusion reigns.
I also wouldn't count on Linux staying cheap. All of the major Linux commercial vendors are putting plans into place or releasing enterprise or professional releases that are both much more expensive, and have a much lower change rate. What else do you expect? Linux companies have been going broke left and right for years, and only a few now are starting to make a profit. There have to be profitable Linux vendors if linux is going to be a commercial success, and that means money, lots more money. And that money will come from their customers for license and support costs. I pay less for Sun support than what is in my budget for Red Hat support. It will be interesting to watch what happens to the Linux marketplace once that becomes more common.
The change rate for commercial linux is starting to drop for the professional releases. This has to happen since if you need something reliable that you are going to bet your business on, you can't afford the overhead of the constant release churning that has marked the Linux world to date. Testing, certification, and quality assurance take time. I wonder how that will effect Linux in the marketplace?
Its kind of ironic, but many of the things that you list as big advantages for Linux are really disadvantages to those with deep pockets. Rapid change is bad. Cheap is irrelevant. Almost as stable isn't stable. Those cost of the application, its implementation and maintenance is king. But the Linux commercial marketplace is heading toward those opportunities. I wonder what the outcome will be?
Linux
Long before Sun evaluated the first AMD chip for blade, I was thinking this would be a good idea for them. Regardless of many things, prices is just the tipping point. Using AMD, Sun does not have to put too much effort developing chips. AMD and Intel has quicker CPU cyle because of the Desktop root. This makes Sun's offer more competitive in term of price, publicity, and performance (at whatever cost they charge).
I am surpised that people compares Sparcs, and AMD (interm of its vitality), while they don't bother look at a real life example. IBM sells Intel chips for years, and doing very well with it, but they still sell their power line of chips. Does it really matter if the power line failed and their intel server succeeded? Sounds like a negative impact, but not really since if not supporting x86 line, and their Risk/Unix line is dead, they are worse off.
So, for a company, Sun supporting the AMD and Intel is no brainer. Cost is everything to business. Whether Sparc dies or not is irrelevant as long as you execute things right.
Time change, things change, your business must change, and sometimes your processors must change too.
People don't by Sun's hardware because 3 factors:
1) High cost (compare to the commodity of x86 HW)
2) Close (closed hardware and software environment)
3) Company and industry images (people tends to be nervous if everyone else support linux, and they also fear if Sun goes down).
So, lower the cost, open up with widely support x86 hardware, show that you're more competitive, and you'll survive and thrive.
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.
Even hp has hpux running on Itanium.
Thats not that suprising, since Itanium is explicitly designed to be backwards compatible with PA-RISC. From the initial drawing on napkins in bars, Itanium was to replace PA-RISC and run HP-UX. They helped design the chips. Itanium II is more HP than Intel design from what I remember. HP actually had 64 bit design experience with PA-RISC and it shows in Itanium II. Carly Fiorina's plan saw R & D as a cost, not an investment, and has essentially killed all R & D and HP will now use commodity parts. Many people think this is a mistake, and now HP is up shit creek because the wanted economies of scale aren't even close to materializing. Itanium the 1st was a dog and though Itanium II is better, it's still workable only with huge megacaches. The whole EPIC thing requires very smart compiler writers, and will take a while before it comes out. People aren't buying them
Oddly enough, HP increased some performance by doing the opposite of EPIC in some PA-RISC chip: instead of forcing parallelism at compile time, there's a dynamic recompilation at runtime where you know what paths you are taking and you can optimize. The Sun compiler can use some runtime data and feed it to the optimizer, but this was happening all in-chip.
they don't like it
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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
What the fuck is the deal with Scot McNealy's teeth? They reflect more light than the surface of the moon. Maybe if he kept his mouth shut Sun wouldn't be in such a mess. Hang on.....
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.
When it comes to raw number crunching, SPARC chips are terrible. They can now manage to beat PIIIs most of the time, and even the newer Celerons sometimes, but they're well behind the latest AthlonXP or P4 in terms of processing performance.
However, what Sun does have is great software support, great supporting hardware that gives their processors tons of I/O bandwidth, the ability to scale very well to a large number of processors and the customer and sales support to bring this all together. That's something that neither AMD or Intel can touch (or anyone else for that matter except for perhaps IBM).
Still, despite all that, Sun has to do something if they plan to keep Sparc around for too much longer. They used to have top-notch processors, but now their chips are average at best. They're also seriously suffering from being almost a whole manufacturing process generation behind their competition.
Sun is now offering UltraSparc IIIi processors:
http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-IIIi/
They do have some similarities to AMD's opteron processor:
- 1 MB on-chip L2 cache
- integrated memory controller
- 128bit DDR Ram
- large L1 cache
It should be interesting to compare those two processors.
"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"
F ebruary 2003 (1 year newer than your more recent article)
Ok I Did.
http://news.com.com/2100-1010-990662.html
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.