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Sun to Merge UltraSPARC with Fujitsu's SPARC64?
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.
I wonder how Sun is going to get out of this long term contract with TI... otherwise, I don't see how this new merger is going to really help Sun.
Davak
Who says they have a long term contract?
The section of the article quoted above doesn't say anything about it.
1. Together they are going to develop "cutting edge" CPUs...
2. Fujitsu is going to mass produce them...
3. Forget !@#!!@# Profit -- Just hoping for survival?
will they name the new company Sun-tsu?
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.
... Their multi-core CPU plans.
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
It seems that Fujitsu is not confirming that the two companies will "broaded this relationship." See quote below.
Too much news being leaked? Or is there another reason to not confirm this at this time?
But I thought Sun didn't have a Linux strategy...
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Sun breaking away from TI would most likely be very damaging to TI.
Yes, but if you have to choose wether to piss off an old friend, who has been quite unreliable lately, or get pissed yourself, what would you choose?
They might be doing Linux, but they are certainly not keen on the idea and are only doing so because their customers keep asking for it. Well, at least they are listening to their customers I suppose, so there is that, but it still feels to me like Sun has seriously lost its sense of direction recently. I suspect a lot of FUD filled editorial is going to be written under banners like "Has the SPARC gone out for Sun?" real soon now.
Still, at least Apple's star seems to be rising at the moment. ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I hope this isn't the only iron in the fire fort Sun.
As others have mentioned, it will ruin their good relationship with TI.
Also, it's doubtful that special purpose RISC chips can provide enough in the price/performance arena to keep from having their market share continue to decline, as it has for the last 10 years or so.
Low end Linux servers is a dangerously competitive business for Sun to be in, but it's a growing business and one where they have much to offer.
Fortunately, if Sun "doesn't have a Linux strategy", Dell, the 800 lb gorilla, is still half-napping, too. Dell's support of Linux is weaker than that of rivals IBM and HP, plus their potentially missing some nice opportunities by actively ignoring non-Intel x86.
Sun should climb on board the AMD Opteron with Linux. They are a company with the experience and credentials to create a quality piece of hardware and have the UNIX background to cover the software side, too.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They are obviosly need all the "Art of War" knowledge they can get at the moment.
Though Lao-tse is not quite on the same page...
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
SUN's biggest problem is that they employ a ton of chip (second only to Intel) and system designers to design their systems. As I understand it, Fujitsu develops their own chip compatable with the SPARC architecture. The two companies are now competing with Intel who sells 100 million CPUs a year (Xeon doesn't require a whole lot of R&D beyond a regular P4), in a good year they both might sell 5 million CPUs (I'm not positive about fujitsu's unit volumes) so their cost per chip is significantly higher. Combining these efforts should help both companies reduce costs, by spreading lower development costs over more CPUs, and might help them compete with the new IA-32 based competitors.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
.. any bets on how long it'll take Darl to start foaming at the mouth, claiming that Fujitsu now owes SCO some $ due to partnering with Sun?
Anyone?
I give it a week, two max from when it's officially announced.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
and brings market share back up, it will really be the land of the rising Sun...
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
...then wouldn't it be a good idea to insist that TI be a secondary fab?
And it gives Sun the chance to more[sic: move ] resources to extend their Linux and x86 business.
You're either very cynical and this sarcastic, or your're just naive.
Merging does free up resources, it's true. Those resources are then promptly kicked out the door to reduce payroll, not shifted to extend the x86 business that they've already cut.
Sometimes I worry that no matter how cynical I become, it will never be enough to keep up. -- Lily Tomlin
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Look at this Slashdot story from Feb 2003. The article referenced there shows that in 64bit land there are haves (Intel, AMD, IBM, SPARC64 and still around: Alpha) and have-nots (everybody else, including UltraSPARC, PA_RISC and MIPS). For Sun, the most logical way to stay competitive in the performance race and get out of the losers' gene pool is to join forces with Fujitsus SPARC64 program. So it looks like the natural thing to do.
On every desktop at work, we have 2 machines, a dell laptop and a sun workstation. And over the last few years, everyone started putting linux on the sun workstations. Gnome helped keep some users on Solaris, but the main people switched to KDE and SuSE linux.
Then someone finally stated, why dont we just buy a dell desktop and put Linux on it, and have full support. Looks like the death of Sun workstation in our ops group. The only people left are the NOC which use X and Citrix, and will stay with the Ultra10s (multiheaded)...
Sun had a good product with the Sunblades, but they didnt push or support linux on them. 1000 bux and you got a nice little workstation, took standard PC parts, and works pretty well.
So, if Sun gets to keep the workstation market, and Fijitsu keeps the server market, seems like a bad move for Sun. Why would you buy x86 servers from Sun that run linux, when you could by x86 servers from a true x86 company like Dell? OR buy support from Redhat, a true linux support company?
Doesnt make sense.
No need to wait:
.Less is more !
There's no reason why TI couldn't keep making the UltraSPARC IIi, IIe, II, III Cu, IIIi, IV, IVi CPUs for quite some time, as the UltraSPARC installed base is very large. Chips like the IIi and IIIi probably give TI much more volume in the long term than the III Cu, anyway. If Sun and TI do break up it would be more of a weaning than a pushing overboard in the Arctic.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Probably because most of the people who read this site are teenagers or people in their 20s who've yet to
have any exposure to real high end computer systems and seem to think that the PC world IS the computer world with everything else (mainframe, unix hardware etc) just
irrelevant small fry hanging off the edge. Those of us who've worked in computers for some time know that the reality in the business market is
the other way around.
My only question is who.
I could see IBM or Motorola or HP or Fujitsu as strong candidates to take over sun. Besides Sun's large bank account, they dont really have much going for them in the long run. Unless they use that money to come up with some awesome marketable product, they are done. But they have so many patents and such a large install base I just cant see them closeing shop entirely, someone is gonna pick them up. The question is who and when.
Mcneally's job is quite certainly on the ropes. I would suspect that he would break friendships to try and keep it going.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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
Those are some fairly impressive milestones, but anyone that has followed Sun closely knows that Sun has been TI's bitch, basically the same way Apple has been Motorola's bitch.
TI has not kept up with product milestones. If they had met all of their deadlines, right now Sun's servers would have UltraSparc IVs running at 2Ghz+. Instead they have not kept up in the mhz. race and have been dragging Sun's overall performance down.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
The originally proposed quick fix is to simply redesign the the Sun servers to accept the SPARC64-V. An even better proposal, now leaked by the press, is to simply discontinue the Sun-designed servers and to sell re-branded Fujitsu designed servers. The latter proposal is a much faster path to solving the server-performance problem at Sun but leads to lower profit margins. Clearly, the situation at Sun is dire, so you can be assured that one of these proposals will be adopted. (Please read "Sun posts deeper loss for quarter". Having lower profit margins is better than having no profit margins. Right now, the second proposal appears to be winning.
Sun Microsystems will most likely fire more than 50% of its processor development team. The single biggest cause of Sun losing marketshare so rapidly is the UltraSPARC III. It has horrible performance. Check "SPEC" and "TPC".
How does this deal help Fujitsu? It can now sell more servers and get more cash. Fujitsu has the upperhand and should force Sun to accept the second proposal: Sun exits the highend server market and sells rebranded Fujitsu-designed servers. To avoid being dependent on Sun, Fujitsu should move rapidly to jettisoning the Solaris OS in favor Linux. Fujitsu is rapidly being shaped into a company like IBM: high-performance servers and computing services are the mainstays of the business.
As a side note, Fujitsu rejects hiring foreign workers (the equivalent of H-1Bs). Their SPARC64-V and SPARC64-VI were designed and built almost exclusively by native talent. When Fujitsu hires workers, Fujitsu most values the quality of "willingness to work", not "best match of skills"; Fujitsu will take the time to train its employee. Fujitsu is a traditional Japanese company that emulates most of the values that once characterized traditional American companies. Sun, by contrast, encourages the employment of H-1Bs; the UltraSPARC III and the UltraSPARC IV were built substantially by former or current H-1B workers. Sun seeks only "best match of skills" and, along with Intel, claims that they absolutely need H-1B worker even during a period of 8% unemployment among native Americans in Silicon Valley.
I agree fully. I work in the Financial industry and have seen OS/Hardware implementations stay status quo. Most exchanges have standardized on Sun and are not going to risk their reputations and financial stability on Microsoft or Linux.
Microsoft because it is not secure. Linux because there is no accountability when the $%^@ hits the fan. This however, is not my belief. I love Linux and the BSD's. Both would be good fit's in the financial world in my opinion.
I think IBM will be able to get Linux into the finacial world as their primary backend OS. But it is going to take some time convincing the big wigs and especially the lawyers.
Personally, I think Sun isn't going to go anywhere especially when it comes to their hardware. Now the OS is another story. It remains to be seen what Linux 64 Bit has in store for the future.
TI has not kept up with product milestones. If they had met all of their deadlines, right now Sun's servers would have UltraSparc IVs running at 2Ghz+. Instead they have not kept up in the mhz. race and have been dragging Sun's overall performance down.
texas instruments is truly fucked recently. the sun deal is a big one. the other big loss for them is the OMAP and DM310 processors (arm9 + dsp). neither has been able to meet promised performance benchmarks. their biggest customer for these, palm (palmsource, palmone, wtf is their name now?), has abandoned the omap (which was in the first tungsten palms) and switched to intel xscale processors. the biggest customer for their big core processors is nokia. and if t.i. keeps failing to deliver, i don't see how long they'll be able to keep them much longer.
With the newly idle systems designers, Sun should:
In addition, Sun should do the same with Opteron (and perhaps Itanium), supporting Solaris across the entire line, and hosting platform-specific operating systems where appropriate (including Windows data center edition and enterprise Linux, plus even HP-UX). Sun should become the commodity manufacturer of enterprise hardware, maintaining the reliability that we see in Sparc wherever possible.
This is Carly's worst nightmare.
That would be a shame. Sun's server designs are better than Fujitsu's, they're just stuck using an inferior CPU. In the low to mid-range they're equal, but Fujitsu does not offer the same RAS options as the high-end (4800+) Sun lineup.
Dude. Employment among native americans is much higher than 8%. It is closer to 15%.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Now, SUNW is conceding the market for high-end servers.
SUNW recently purchased Afara. It supplies processors for low-end servers. SUNW will still try to maintain a presence there. Unfortunately, with the SPARC64 going to 4 cores per die and 2 threads per core, the processor from Afara is starting to look less and less competitive. SUNW will exit the market for even low-end servers by 2007.
The announcement of Power5, with its SMT capabilities, is tantamount to announcing a starship for intergalatic space travel when all the spacecraft in the Federation can only travel within the solar system. Power5 and, to a lesser extent, SPARC64 basically killed the UltraSPARC line and the entire hardware business of the Sun Microsystems.
By the way, Professor Susan Eggers of the University of Washington must be tickled pink because she development most of the technology for simultaneous multithreading. IBM, with its Power5, proved that her ideas were all right. The Draper prize in engineering should be going her way.
Fujitsu doesn't have the hardware range that Sun has. Plus the Solaris installed base wouldn't necessarily follow along with a move to Linux. Sure Sun has problems, but it seems to me that standardising the bus interface across ultrasparc and sparc64 would be a good hedge and save costs across the two companies. Don't forget that Sun sells a lot of equipment below the level of Fujitsu's range. Without that breeding ground, where would ne E15k or Primepower customers come from?
Chris
As a Sun system administrator and a military strategist on SST, I think they should call it, simply, Sun Tzu. I would take offense of use of the hyphen. heh.
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I doubt that Sun has any long-term contracts that extend beyond producing the UltraSparc IV, if even that. If this Sun/Fujitsu partenership does pan out, it probably won't be for another couple of years at least. Sun is still fairly early in their design of the Ultrasparc V, so perhaps it will be around that time frame.
Besides, TI hasn't exactly been a stelar partener for Sun. They are definitely NOT one of the big three manufacturer's of high-end chips (Big-three being Intel, AMD and IBM, ie the only three companies that are really manufacturing top-end performance processors). They were late to the 130nm node, they'll probably be late to the 90nm node and they aren't ramping clock speeds at nearly the pace of the others. At best TI is just keeping pace with the low-cost manufacturers like TSMC and UMC (if they're even managing that), and I'd wager a guess that Sun is paying a fair bit more to get their chips made by TI than what the Taiwanese would charge.
In any case, this merger of technologies makes GREAT sense. Neither Sun or Fujitsu make nearly enough money on hardware sales to justify continous development of new, high-end processors. Developing new, top-end performance processors costs a LOT of money, which is why there are now only 5 companies left doing so including Sun and Fujitsu (again, Intel, IBM and AMD are the other three). By combining together, they might just have enough sales to make it worthwhile though. If not, Sun is going to have to majorly change the way they do business.
And when Sun is no more, what is the Financial industry going to do then? Hmmm???
I had a PHB get all miffy on me when I suggested commodity Intel-based hardware in a server farm - more bang fer yer (weakening Yankee) buck...