Sun Announces New AMD-Based Product Line

Transfan76 writes "Today Sun Microsystems has officially announced an alliance with AMD. They "have formed an alliance to deliver a broad range of AMD Opteron[tm] processor-based systems, Sun also announced it plans to offer its Java Enterprise System on the AMD Opteron processor and is significantly extending the reach of its Solaris Operating System (OS) and leadership in the 64-bit space." You can read the official press release from Sun here. And the AMD release here." We previously reported rumored plans to this effect a few days back.

Comments

Wonderful news

[Anonymous Coward]

Air conditioning manufacturers specialising in cooling server rooms will be delighted with Sun's switch...

Who Knowns

[Anonymous Coward]

The Java Desktop they could create some serious revenue. Imagine a large company with Opteron workstation for engineering and scientific appilcations and SunRays as e-mail/web/StarOffice boxes.

Sun, the company who is now renowed for their expensive systems could use "commodity" computing to bring themselves back and Linux to the desktop. Who would have thought.

Re:Who Knowns

[digitalhermit]

It could be one of those ideas whose time has finally arrived. My experience with Java hasn't been all that great. There are several competing Java VMs and each had idiosyncracies and problems that precluded the "write once, run anywhere" philosophy from actually working. Getting Java to work under Linux is not quite as simple as under Windows or MacOS, and messages on news groups, the Fedora Core lists, and in local LUGs attest to this.

The latest releases are *much* easier, however. I downloaded and installed the latest Sun Java SDK on a Fedora Core 1 machine. The graphical installer put everything in /opt (not exactly LSB, but I can live with it) and exited. It didn't set JAVA_HOME or adjust any user PATH variables, but hunting through the instructions I was able to find the correct chapter (I knew this before reading, just wanted to confirm that they did say so).

Now Java has always had this (perhaps undeserved) reputation for being slow. Not the case with Java/Fedora. Whether it's the NPTL that's part of Fedora or optimizations in the Java VM itself, the jar files I tried opened as quickly as natively compiled applications. Responsiveness was just as good. For the record I tried Jedit, Arachnophilia, Mindterm, WeirdX and a bunch of math/science applications for fractals, mapping, function graphing, etc.. Yes, a lot of the applications are already available natively under Linux, but the idea that I can move my desktop environment to anywhere without setting up automatic NFS mounts, playing with VNC servers, or fussing with roaming profiles is pretty cool.

Now I'm not as big a Sun fan as I was five years ago, but I think this technology is pretty cool.

IBM and now Sun

[Euphonious Coward]

With IBM shipping Opteron boxes, and now Sun announcing, it seems the Opteron architecture probably has legs. When HP announces, all doubt will fade.

(If you never had doubts about Opteron's ultimate prospects, consider Alpha. It had more going for it than Opteron ever did, and generations earlier. Current Alphas (EV7 and EV79) are fully competitive with current Opteron and Itanium, even without a proper engineering team for several years, yet the Alpha is "dead".)

Intel could do a lot worse than to revive it. It may need to, to stay competitive with Opteron.

Re:But will this really help web-focused enterpris

[oldmanmtn]

optimizing their syndicated dynamic solutions marketbase...cross-media functionalities...enterprise-level mindshare paradigms

Good god man! You've created a Content Black Hole! You're dragging down the Scores of every post in the vicinity!

Sun also announces 0.5-1m desktop win in China

[ChrisRijk]

Register article

Along with the Opteron systems, Sun announced a big win for its Java Desktop System. The Chinese government will roll out 500,000 to one million PCs with the software over the next year.

"This, I believe makes us the number one Linux player on the planet," McNealy said. "The goal is to reach the Chinese government's goal of 500 million alternative desktops, and you can decide what alternative means."

Re:AMD SPARC?

[southpolesammy]

SPARC is an open specification. Nothing's stopping them from doing it now, except perhaps ROI.

No pulled punches

[painehope]

stands as a beacon for HP and IBM customers facing a dead-end Unix, and Microsoft customers frustrated with security and fragility
I wouldn't be surprised if they kicked a dog on the way off the stage...

Union of the underdogs?

[Shutter_BC]

I've been an AMD fan for quite a while, as anyone who reads articles at Anandtech tends to become. This has been more or less already stated, but... where is this going to lead without a strong media presence or public interest? I wonder how Sun and AMD plan to educate non-techies and convince them that they're cool.

I wish the both of them the best of luck, and one of these days, may good engineering prevail. I hope.

Reported by Slashdot?

[szquirrel]

We previously reported rumored plans to this effect a few days back.

Where "previously reported" means "we linked to the article on news.com".

Credit where credit is due?

And how good is that?

[AndroidCat]

[..] offering unmatched levels of privacy, second only to the Windows .NET security framework.

Second to .NET's security? I have a bad feeling about this...

Had to say it

[aardwolf204]

I've been an AMD fan for quite a while

You must be very dizzy. My AMD fan goes 5000 RPM.


Sorry, couldnt resist. I like AMD too, and yes, Anand could take Tom any day.