Slashdot Mirror
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."
They know that linux is the future-- Sun is simply adapting to survive. Both it and Opteron are more cost-effective than UNIX and SPARC, respectively.
I thought that when they decided to focus more on linux and less on solaris, this was good, because they could focus on what the excelled at...hardware.
What exactly is the point of this post? And the competition has always been one-sided. In every case except the first, you're talking about a 4% market share competing with a 90%+ market share. Do you really think all these technologies will come roaring into the forefront by 2005?
and your posting on SlashDot. Your life sucks as much as mine.
:-)
that depends... which one (if either) of you is posting from work???
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
"So what does the 20+ years' lineage of the SPARC architecture represent, if not Sun's ability to successfully design, implement, market and deploy processors? Hello? McFly?"
If they're so successful, why does a $2000 Opteron system outperform a $10000 Sun system? SPARC has fallen behind on the performance curve, and yet they still charge a fortune for their machines. They are surviving only because people still need legacy apps, but as more stuff is ported to Linux, they're losing that market too. They have no choice but to compete in the x86 market since they have no better solution currently, either in performance or cost.
Vote for Pedro
- G5 vs. Opteron, ok - OS X vs. Windows, where are the winshit improvements? - Linux vs. Windows, where are the winshit improvements? - Mozilla/Firebird/Thunderbird vs. IE/Outlook, No more IE releases until 2005, no more Outlook Express releases. The competition is one-sided in that Microsoft "ownz0rs" the desktop market. They can hold out for that long without anything new to throw in. In two years, they'll come along with a few new shiny tricks. Their software will still suck, but they won't lose any significant portion of the low-end market.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
> comparing a Dell system to a SUN is just wrong headed.
Not so much in the 1 and 2 processor space. Sun's lower end has been your basic PCI Mobo grade stuff for many years now, save Sparc and Solaris. IDE drives, limited expansion, "the works" we've come to know and love from PC land.
Somewhat hard to tell, unless you look inside, because Sun controls Solaris and Solaris controls you.
As for the Sparc CPU, it is nothing particular to write home about, not bad, not great either.
Solaris has it's points, good and bad. Linux is clearly catching up, real fast, tho. Soon, if not already, they will be "exactly the same, only different" (So, maybe you're locked into Sun, accept it for what it is rather than preaching).
Sun has always been "overpriced", unless you needed some specific Solaris feature or a good dose of Corporate CYA. Remember, we're talking 4 CPU's now.
Now, IF your application set has a snowball's chance of growing into the 4+ CPU boxes, Sun or IBM are on the short list. You overpay for the little boxes just to make life, in general, easier.
Who cares?
That $10,000 will still be running, with full hardware support 5 years from now.
You'll be lucky to be able to buy ram with a warantee for that Opteron. Which will probably ahve bit the dust from component failures anyways.
Now a $5,000 Opteron or G5 on the other hand...
Just remember your cheap-ass desktop components may stand up to 3-4 years of mild desktop use, but the same components will die much quicker in a server.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
I, for one, think this is a smart move on Sun's part -- and hopefully a key move as part of a strategy to make Sun successful in the Unix market of the 21st century (you know, the one where people want and use Linux on commodity processors).
Opteron is a great choice. Not only is it technologically superior to Itanic, but it allows Sun and AMD to work together to keep Intel at bay. What's good for Intel usually ends up being good for Dell and Microsoft -- not Sun. Plus, Sun gets to save face by not having to turn around and say "uhhh... ok, maybe Intel isn't so bad after all."
All Sun has to do now is execute this properly, sell the products at a reasonable price, and stand behind a solid dual Linux/Unix strategy the way IBM and HP are doing. The toughest part will, of course, be keeping McNealy's big mouth closed.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
For the moment, I won't gripe too hard about 'shifting from PPC back to commodity hardware.'
But if you then say ANYTHING about IA-64, I'm going to jump down your throat with lawn aerators on both feet.
Be cautious about what you call commodity and what you call proprietary.
Just because a lot of something is made doesn't mean it's not proprietary.
Just because it's low volume doesn't mean it is proprietary, or not a commodity.
IMHO, Intel is only kept in check pricewise, by the presence of AMD, to a lesser extent, Via and Transmeta, and to a still lesser extent by PPC and other 'non-commodity' processors.
IA-64 is simply THE MOST PROPRIETARY processer there is. It's IP is held by a separate company, licensed to Intel and HP, so that prior contracts those two have don't give anyone else IA-64 access. The PII bus was patented, the PIV bus is patented, SSE (and/or SSE-II_ is patented.
They're perfectly within their rights to do this. But then you have to watch what you call 'closed' and 'open'.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The first serious sign that McNealy & Co. are actually thinking. This could be positive for Sun if they execute it right...something I have my doubts about though.
Sun reminds me of Atari or Amiga from days past...great company with lots of innovative ideas, piss poor execution.
They really need to spell out the future for their customers, will they adopteron the Operon for all servers eventually or is this just a little hack to keep the analysts off their back.
If they treat this like their x86 servers with annoucements like:
"We'll sell you this x86 junk if you really want it, but if you want to do anything serious give us a call about our UltraSPARC servers running Solaris!"
Comments like that don't incite confidence that as a customer I'm going to get support. Or long term roadmaps.
Look, Sun makes great hardware above the low end, but an old K6-2 beats a Blade 100 desktop in perceived performance and compile speeds. The IIe chip is low power -- in more ways than one. If you don't have a CPU-bound process, like say, a web server for mostly static pages, a Netra X1 or V100 works great, but it's not a fast CPU.
OK. Price/performance. Let's see. SPEC2000 results, Sun Blade 100 (650Mhz US IIe, fastest IIe available in a system) gets 246 integer, 276 floating point. An Opteron 146 (2.0Ghz), on an Asus SK8N board, gets 1262 integer, 1300 floating point.
Just in case you meant the US IIIi, as used in the new V210, V240, V250, and Blade 1500, the results on a V210 (server chassis, 1002 Mhz) are 555 integer, 841 floating point. If and when Sun can get the IIIi up to 2Ghz, that would not quite match the Opteron for integer ops, and just beat it for floating point. Of course, by that time, the Opteron will probably be up to 3Ghz and smoke any available IIIi.
Any more bullshit to sling about price/performance?
Benchmarks from www.spec.org, as published by the vendors. Configurations of the boxes are detailed there.
-30-
The parent recognized one of the (now) top reasons companies do not upgrade core I.T. functionality, and the name of that game is legacy applications. Some companies have entire database systems and all the apps to access that setup running on outdated hardware that they'd upgrade in a flash... if it wasn't so prohibitively expensive to port million(s) of lines of code with all the possible errors that the process may produce.
Sun really is good at designing processors. It's just that because Intel won the volume war because it happened to be the processor for the peecee, it was able to scale up manufacturing to cut prices even more, and sell to PHBs who care about price, not quality. Had IBM gone with the Motorola 68000 back when the first PC came out, which almost happened, we would see a totally different landscape today, where Intel would have probably gone the way of companies like National Semiconductor or Zilog. Imagine the first Linux kernel could have been written for an architecture with 4 times the registers. But alas, today, perhaps our only hope to remove the x86 plague is the PPC.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
What about blocking advertisement images? That might be counter to Microsoft's own interests, putting them in a complicated situation. This suggests an interesting strategy: make features which are contrary to your opponents' business interests into "must haves."
so Sun will become Dell or HP???
I seriously doubt it.
1. Neither Dell nor HP has a high-end server operating system equivalent to Solaris.
2. Sun's hardware has been of a higher caliber and reliability. I have no reason to assume that they would put any less effort into their Opteron-based products.
3. Sun has never chased the consumer desktop market. You won't find a Sun for sale at Best Buy. Nor will you find pictures on Sun's web site of smiling, multi-ethnic families clustered around Sun machines on which the children are doing homework.
4. Sun has the technical know-how that neither HP nor Dell has. Sun continues to innovate while HP and Dell are content to sell cookie-cutter PCs. There's nothing wrong with the latter as a business plan, but it's a far cry from Sun's technical leadership role in the industry.
I'll be happy if Sun backs away from their SPARC CPU development. They don't sell enough hardware to cover the R&D costs necessary to make SPARC CPUs competitive against Intel, AMD, or even IBM offerings.
so perhaps it's a bit harsh to unduly criticise Dell...
Wasn't. Was comparing them to my IBM servers. As I said, they are fine for non-critical systems, and are good for the money, but my *experience* has shown that they are not as robust as IBM. This is based on years of using both brands, not only in the server room, but on the desktop as well. In the server room, they are adequate for many tasks, but there is NO comparison to IBM in quality. Its not bashing Dell, its just real world experience.
Rented boxes are not critical systems, not by IT standards, although uptime is important. I know because I rent a rack for offsite backups. Dells are designed to be CHEAPER than IBM, not as powerful/robust/redundant. For most people, this is adequate, and even for lots of my uses it is, just not all. My primary DNS server, for instance, is an old IBM pentium pro 200 (dual) box with IBM drives that I purchased new for around $4500 (no drives, no os, 1 cpu, 32mb ram). Over 40,000 hours on it and I still consider it more reliable than a new Dell. I consider primary DNS to be a critical system, TOO critical to use inexpensive parts, regardless of brand.
You speak of Intel NIC cards, but Intel is who makes many of the parts for Dell. They all use intel chips, chipsets, etc. That is part of the problem. IBM uses some Intel chips, but uses their own for server management. Personally, I'm just buying time until IBM finally releases their Quad 2.0ghz 970 server (970 = G5) for $3500 mid 04. That will replace both of my Dell servers, and two of my IBMs as well, and I will be rid of Intel chips completely, on the server side. Intel on the client side is just fine, although AMD gives more bang for the buck. Dell doesn't offer that option anymore tho.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!