Sun To Build Opteron Servers

geekee writes "According to an article at CNET, Sun is planning on creating Opteron-based servers. These are expected to include 2-processor and 4-processor models running either Solaris or Linux. This move isn't surprising, given the performance and cost gaps between the Opteron and UltraSPARC processors. A move to Opteron would allow them to be more competitve in cost and focus more on what they're good at, designing systems, not processors."

Comments

Re:LINUX IS A TOY

[TheCrazyFinn]

The advantages of the Sun Sparc systems is not price/performance but reliability and performance under load.

Sure Solaris is a dog on a lightly loaded system. But when your load average is sitting at 30, it's still performing near the same level. x86 boxes would fail under the load that Sparcs can hold up under.

And they're bloody reliable, and when they break, Sun's support contracts are excellent. Only HP and IBM compare on the support side, and only HP and IBM's RISC boxes compare on the reliability side (lord knows IBM's Netfinities don't.)

It's all about TCO in the end. You buy the sparcs less often, and they're cheaper to maintain.

Re:64-bit question...

[kinema]

Sun has said that a x86-64 version of Solaris will be availible in the first quarter of 2004 and that a preview will here before the end of the year.

Re:OP is Flamebait

[Jeff DeMaagd]

They have no choice but to compete in the x86 market since they have no better solution currently, either in performance or cost.

Not best on performance but it is best on price/performance. According to that Sandia paper, an Alpha EV7 at 1.25GHz is about 50% faster than Opteron at 2.5GHz. Obviously, using Alpha likely costs more than 50% more than an equivalent Opteron implementation.

Re:pardon me

[Doomdark]

Nope, it's not buggy PoS; it may be behind in features, but it (esp. coupled with Sparc hw) has couple of benefits over most other unixes:

• Stability and SUPPORT. Red Hat may discontinue support for previous OS version with tiny little transition window of, say, 6 months. Sun will continue to support old Solaris versions for much much longer; with FULL support (patches, tech support). And systems where you need 24x7 availability, not latest bells and whistles, this is a very good thing. You don't HAVE to upgrade just because vendor thinks it'd like you to.
• Good raw I/O throughput. Solaris is designed to have very efficient I/O, at least on Sparc platform.

Why Wait for Sun?

[Rob Riggs]

You can get an IBM eServer 325 today.

Re:What are the advantages of server level hardwar

[sgoggin]

You are supposed to get reliabilty

-So multiple power supplies that can be replaced while the machine is running.
-The ability to turn off the power on a PCI slot, so a card can be replaced or added without a reboot.
-Even CPUs can be changed, hey OS stop using that CPU and hardware turn off the power it's acting up and we want to switch it.
-You also get hardware monitoring systems, so you get emailed when a power supply is broken.

In the last few years all these features have also shown up on intel server hardware. Linux and Windows software is also available from the vendors that rivals the sun stuff, in some cases exceeds it.

So maybe Sun is dead. I think Sun would be better served embracing Linux, and producing their own distribution which they could even call Solaris 11. In most of the companies these are critical systems, the money is secondary to the support, but Linux and Windows are unstoppible forces like the Intel architechture.