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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."
so Sun will become Dell or HP???
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
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 know this is the wrong thread - but I am so happy to see healthy competition in the market place. Check out what is happening
- G5 vs. Opteron
- OS X vs. Windows
- Linux vs. Windows
- Mozilla/Firebird/Thunderbird vs. IE/Outlook
It is a good time for computing. Although, with Longhorn so far out (and no further IE improvements until then) I think the competition is going to be a little bit one sided.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
However, I AM currently accepting donations to NOT use Linux!
The question in my mind is are they going to use the full x86-64 extensions, or keep the sparc as the 'real' 64-bit processor and let Solaris x86 remain 32 bit...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Moving to Operton is a good move, but only after a serious of mistakes.
First mistake was in not encouraging 3rd party vendors to adopt the higher-end SPARC's, and ignoring the low-end SPARCs that used to dominate the embedded space. They had a strong position when they moved the SPARC architecture into the open, but lost it when they failed to support that initiative with bare-bones development machines.
Next mistake was creating Solaris for x86. Sun's logic was to hook folk on Solaris in order to get them to move over to their profit-making SPARC's. BIG MISTAKE. Instead, those SPARC vendors decide that they can instead move off of SPARC and keep using Solaris on the lower-cost x86 machines.
Final Mistake was Sun ignoring the low-to-mid range workstation market that they dominated during the 80's. Sun's focus on extreme-high-end servers cost them the middleware support that made Sun boxes worth purchasing in the first place.
This move to Operton might be the only step left for them if they are going to survive outside of a vertical market.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
but the reason I'm more interested in AMD's 64 bit chips instead of Intel's is the names. Intel's is the "Itanium" which sounds like a financial company's plan to expand their commodities market. Boring. AMD's on the other hand is "Opteron" which sounds like a massive and powerful, but benevolent robot who doles out justice all across the land with his fists of iron fury, protecting the interests of all well intentioned people.
"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
I too dream of the day when Apple's stranglehold on the high-end server market is broken. Hahahaha!!!!!
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.
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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.
Last October (2002) I was talking to some AMD folk, and they indicated Sun was on board. Over the past year, those ties have gotten stronger, and the two companies have been getting closer and closer.
:). The first box that should hit is a dual CPU 1U opteron box, with a 4 way to follow shortly after that. The interesting stuff follows those vanilla boxes.
There are a bunch of boxes on the drawing board, the ones they announced are just the first of many. The delay is that there is no real support for Opterons until they ship Solaris 10, which is due in the not to distant future. Until that OS hits, the Opteron support will be pretty half baked, just Xeon code, and no real use of AMD64 extensions.
That said, without trying to sound to much like a whiny martyr, I have been writing this stuff up for the last year on the Inquirer, just no one believed me
-Charlie
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-
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
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause