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Sun to Merge UltraSPARC with Fujitsu's SPARC64?

Posted by michael on from the dying-gasp dept.

Waldmeister writes "The Register has a story from a japanese source, that Sun and Fujitsu are planning to combine their Unix server businesses. Even if Sun doesn't comment on this, they acknowledge that Scott McNealy met Fujitsu's CEO this week. If this will happen, Fujitsu will get the bigger chunk of manufacturing and engineering. With the PrimePower systems outperforming Sun's SunFire systems for some time now, this sounds reasonable, too. And it gives Sun the chance to more resources to extend their Linux and x86 business." There's also a Reuters story.

4 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ouch to the American Company by Davak · · Score: 5, Informative
    recently confirmed its commitment to TI technology

    I believe that TI and Sun had developed a relationship with TI's production of the 90-nanometer chips.

    Anyway, there is no doubt that the relationship between TI and Sun has been locked in for a long time. Sun breaking away from TI would most likely be very damaging to TI.

    Sun/TI partnership milestones:
    -- 1988 - Sun/TI relationship founded
    -- 1992 - Delivery of SuperSPARC(r) and MicroSPARC(r) 1
    -- 1994 - Delivery of SuperSPARC II
    -- 1995 - Delivery of UltraSPARC I (first 64 bit SPARC processor)
    -- 1997 - Delivery of UltraSPARC II (72-way support)
    -- 2000 - UltraSPARC III (106-way support)
    -- 2001 - Copper UltraSPARC III
    -- 2002 - UltraSPARC III (industry's first 64-bit in 130 nm)
    -- 2003 - First 64-bit 90 nm process samples


  2. SPEC 2000 scores Fujitsu/Sun by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It does seem like Fujitsu has the edge with
    their SparcGP4 chip...

    CINT2000

    Company System Results #CPU
    Fujitsu Limited PRIMEPOWER650 (1350MHz) 905 776 1
    Sun Microsystems Sun Fire V880 (1050MHz) 626 560 1

    CFP2000

    Fujitsu Limited PRIMEPOWER650 (1350MHz) 1340 1096 1
    Sun Microsystems Sun Fire V880(1200MHz) 1082 923 1

  3. Re:Hope this doesn't effect... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Won't. Fujitsu is doing the multi-core thing too.

    SPARC64 chips outperform Ultra in many ways,

    o 6 way pipelineing instructions
    o hardware instruction retry
    o ECache ECC

    MHz for MHz, Fujitsu SPARC is about 30% faster than
    Sun SPARC.

    more reliable too.

  4. Re:They have to by Biolo · · Score: 3, Informative

    UltraSPARC not 64 bit? Since when? We have Ultra1 machines running Solaris in 64 bit mode. SPARC was 32 bit, UltraSPARC is 64!

    --
    Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.