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Sun Considers Opteron
Sanjay writes "Official from Sun spokesman. Sun is considering using AMD's Opteron chip in a server it expects to deliver to the market shortly.
Intead of fighting Win of Wintel (like Redhat is doing), Sun can choose to fight both with Linux AMD's servers and also fight with HP/IBM as Itanium is anyway a non starter.
Sun can rise again!
"
and Slashdot has covered CNET's story
Will I retire or break 10K?
As I read it, the "dupe" was an unofficial speculation. This sounds as though Sun has made an official statement that the speculation was correct.
... It's a new story, and one that actually confirms that they ARE using AMD for something. The first one was saying 'don't count on it, but it might happen'.
So it's only a dupe in general topic, but if that's a true dupe, then everything that says 'New hole found in MS software' should also be a dupe.
----- - The beatings will continue until morale improves
The problem for Sun is that Linux on Opteron does not give Sun much in the way of profits because the profit margin is low and competition is fierce. Sun cannot compete against IBM and HP in this area. Worse, Sun has no services organization to make any money by helping its customers to use Linux on Opteron.
Anyhow remember that stupid comment by Scott McNealy, who claimed that Sun is a one system -- one OS and one processor -- company. Now, Sun is distributing 2 OSes and 2 processors. Read the article at the Economist web site . It says that Sun will lose out big time in the Linux marketplace.
The Sun is setting. Good Riddance.
You've GOT to be kidding? If you were running desktops or small workstations, maybe. But, servers?!
Ever hot swap a CPU on a SMP PC? How about adding a CPU or RAM module without powering down? Hot sawp PCI? How about 4-way machines scalable to 64-way? 64+ Gb of RAM? Terabytes of storage?
PCs are only starting to be able to compete in that market, which is why Sun, IBM, and HP still sell those types of machines.
If you don't need those types of options, then PCs are fine.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
You're suppose to email the editor who posted it. In this case malda@slashdot.org.
Friend or foe?
Apr 10th 2003
From The Economist print edition
The rise of Linux is dividing the computer industry into winners and losers Reuters
Linus, friend of Larry?
LARRY ELLISON, the boss of Oracle, the world's second-largest software firm, likes to make bold claims. Last week he was at it again, attacking his old foe, Microsoft, the world's biggest software company. Microsoft, he declared, risked being "wiped off the face of the earth" by Linux, the free, open-source operating system developed by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish programmer, and a team of enthusiasts. As always, Mr Ellison's prediction should be taken with a handful of salt. But it contains a germ of truth, because the rise of Linux is changing the dynamics of the computer business. Some of the industry's titans benefit from its advance, while others lose. The appeal of Linux is clear. It is free, unlike such rival operating systems as Microsoft's Windows and Sun's Solaris. And it runs on almost any computer, providing compatibility, flexibility and further cost savings. Linux is used mostly to run servers, the back-office machines that handle e-mail, web pages, file sharing, and printing. Several Linux boxes can also be "clustered" together to create cheaply a machine with the power of a supercomputer. Linux has yet to have much impact in the highest echelons of business computing: telecoms-billing systems, airline-reservation systems, and so on. But it is advancing steadily. Once limited to dotcoms, it is now used by such firms as Merrill Lynch, Verizon and Boeing. "2001 was the year of interest, 2002 the year of pilot projects, and 2003 is the year of deployment," says Avery Lyford of Linuxcare, whose software simplifies the adoption of Linux by big firms. A recent report by Gartner, a consultancy, says that "businesses are coming to regard Linux as a worthy alternative to Unix and Windows."
The main loser (so far) as Linux advances is Sun Microsystems, one of the largest server vendors. Its Solaris software is generally deemed to be the most capable flavour of Unix, the family of powerful operating systems used in servers. But for many applications, Solaris is overkill, and Linux, a less capable flavour of Unix, is good enough. Many people who would once have bought expensive Sun boxes running Solaris are now running Linux on cheap, PC-like machines instead. This has forced Sun to embrace the technology that threatens its existence. Last year, Sun launched its first Linux-based server. After several zigzags, it has now decided on its Linux strategy. As well as offering cheap boxes running Linux alongside its more powerful Solaris-based ones, Sun will include its server software with both Linux and Solaris, to make its Linux boxes more attractive and to allow users to "trade up" to Solaris. Even so, many in the industry believe that, thanks to Linux, Sun is doomed. The clearest winner is IBM, closely followed by Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell, each of which has done well selling Linux servers. IBM embraced Linux in 1999, and now offers it across its entire range, from lowly PCs to mighty mainframes. Linux has also boosted IBM's mainframe business, since a single mainframe can be set up to behave like dozens of small Linux servers. Firms with mainframes have thus been able to scrap entire rooms full of Unix servers, such as those made by Sun. Linux also provides something IBM has wanted for years: an operating system that unifies its otherwise baffling product lines. Indeed, notes Art Olbert, an ex-IBM employee now at Linuxcare, Linux strengthens the hand of those firms that champion technological diversity, such as IBM and HP, and undermines firms that push their own
Sun plans to use them in inexpensive blade servers which means they aren't totally abandoning RISC servers.
You're parked in the dark alone with your girl when she suddenly introduces you to Tammy and Buffy. "Girls Who Name Their Breasts" on the next Geraldo.
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.
Check out the SAP benchmark site: http://www.sap.com/benchmark/index.asp 1. Sun is the fastest computer available: Sun Fire 15000, 104-way SMP, UltraSPARC III, 1200 MHz, 8 MB L2 cache, score is 8000 2. If you divide the score by the amount of processors: 8000/104 = 76.9 compare with : IBM eServer xSeries 440 Model 8687-38X, 16-way SMP, Intel Xeon MP 2.0 GHz, 256 kB L2 cache, score 1090 score per cpu: 1090/16 = 68.1 So, even per-cpu basis, trivial UltraSparc III is faster that P4 Xeon 2.0 Ghz. Want to compare with Itanium? NEC Express5800, 1000series Highend Server, 32-way SMP, Itanium2, 1.0 GHz, 3MB L3 cache, score 2750. Per cpu: 2750/32 = 85 Ups! Super-duper Itanium with 3 (!!) Mb of cache is just a little bit faster.
Andrew
1. Sun is the fastest computer available:
Sun Fire 15000, 104-way SMP, UltraSPARC III, 1200 MHz, 8 MB L2 cache, score is 8000
2. If you divide the score by the amount of processors: 8000/104 = 76.9
compare with
IBM eServer xSeries 440 Model 8687-38X, 16-way SMP, Intel Xeon MP 2.0 GHz, 256 kB L2 cache, score 1090
score per cpu: 1090/16 = 68.1
So, even per-cpu basis, trivial UltraSparc III is faster that P4 Xeon 2.0 Ghz.
Want to compare with Itanium?
NEC Express5800, 1000series Highend Server, 32-way SMP, Itanium2, 1.0 GHz, 3MB L3 cache, score 2750.
Per cpu: 2750/32 = 85
Ups! Super-duper Itanium with 3 (!!) Mb of cache is just a little bit faster.
So, you need to consult real benchmarks, SPECint is just interesting exersise, which should not be taking into account for anything above 2-way servers.
Andrew
For those of you bitching that sun4u sucks and yada yada, I'm willing to bet you have never seen anything bigger than an Ultra 10.
Sun Fires are massive boxes. Will all the options that PC's could only dream about: System partitioning, Hot swap _everything_, killer backplane speeds (quad-port fast ethernet cards anyone?)..
True the lone UltraSPARC processor is fairly unimpressive, but in an E12K you can have up to 256 of them if I recall. That's on one single, operating system. So take your silly 48-node Athlon clusters and go home.
Just trying to come to the defense of an arch that really isn't bad when you're not trying to run Lunix on it and play games with WineX.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!