Slashdot Mirror
Sun's new UltraSPARC workstation: the Blade 1500
Roman Hauptmann writes "Here's a review of Sun's newest single-CPU workstation based on the UltraSPARC IIIi processor. According to the review, the system barely performs on the level of a P4 1.8ghz machine yet it sells for several times the price. Despite that, the Blade series still brings value to those who do visualization and imaging."
I'd hope that, for $3-4k, they could do a bit better than an 80GB (2MB cache) Seagate drive. Do "those who do visualization and imaging" really not care about the performance of their storage?
I've never yet seen a machine which skimps on its essential components justify its price tag. No surprise here.
Comparing Sun with x86 is a bit apples and oranges. Maybe on sheer performance it will be beaten by x86 however for crunching big data sets the UltraSparc is just more effecient. Also some software only runs on Solaris so for that this box is good. However I did wonder why it came with Solaris 8 rather than something newer Rus
CPanel + Root from $35/mo - 10% off with discount code SLASHDOT
> not mass produced generic clones like Dell
He probably thinks evey Apples box is lovingly hand built by Steve Jobs. Mass produced just means `selling well`.
Are you familiar with the applications that are certified to run on Sun workstations? Not all have been ported to Linux.
--Richard
Despite that, the Blade series still brings value to those who do visualization and imaging.
This is by far the most overrated device since the Hindenburg won the 1937 Lakehurst Best Lighter-than-air Aircraft competition.
-- Ray Charles
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
From the article:
"The proprietary 64-bit workstation market is dominated by Sun Microsystems, which sells more 64-bit machines than any other company -- their market share is over 60%."
I wonder how long this market domninance is going to last now that commodity hardware is going 64. (e.g. a 64-bit laptop for $1,549)
Uglist. Box. Evar. That red dot -- if you punch it hard enough, does it explode (assuming you make it through the AT field...)?
Not that I'm saying that the machine would be my choice, but..
This machine is 64bit moron! UltraSPARC has been 64bit for quite some time now.. It's software is all 64bit, it has a true 64bit OS.
Not of course that that makes much difference to anything, as there are very few applications that require 64bit addressing as yet. Just about every processor current can move data in at least 64bit chunks.. often 128bit.
Perhaps, next time, take the effort to even open the page you are going to comment on and have a quick glance - it can do wonders!
I think the SPARC IV is due sometime in the next few months (probably just for the big iron for 6 months or so), if I recall correctly it's largely a dual core SPARC III with more incremental improvements. There is at least speculation that SUN will offer an Opteron based workstation in addition to the already announced entry-level server. I think there is development on a SPARC V, Fujitsu seems to be having better luck with their SPAEC implementations currently. There are also rumors that a bigger partnership will develop between the two firm's development.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
It's never a suprised that people on slashdot just don't get Sun equipment. Much like Apple, companies (I'd wager extremely few people buy Sun's for personal everyday use) that buy these boxes are buying them for the OS and rarely for the groundbreaking hardware.
;)
They like the support that Sun provides with thier OS and how it's been grown to be rock solid. Yada, yada, yada. Cut to the posts here by people that probably have never seen a Sun box let alone owned/used one and I'm not shocked.
Disclaimer: This is not a troll.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
incompetant
did you mean incompetent ?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I disagree; I would say Solaris is the biggest reason why Sun have loyal customers.
The reviewer just doesn't get it. The reason you get a machine like this is so that you can run the same software, unchanged, on your big 32 or 64 CPU fridge-sized machine in the back room as you can on your desktop workstation. You run the same OS, the same binaries, use the same dev tools and you just know it will work. If it doesn't work, someone from Sun will be around to fix it, quickly.
As for going on about the "Restrictive" license surrounding Solaris. For fuck's sake, it's FREE (as in beer) to download and use - for Sparc and Intel.
And then there are automatic software updates that you have to accept? WTF? is he on drugs?
Sun have recommended patch clusters (AKA Service Packs) and individual patches that you are free to download and install as you choose. There's nothing compulsory about them.
Oh, and there's no.... RESET BUTTON!
I dunno about anyone else who uses Solaris out there, but I've _never_ seen a Sun machine lock up hard, such that a Reset Button would have been the solution...
Stick to reviewing your latest 0verclocked AMD with peltier and watercooling and neon casemods...
- k
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
The problem with Sun is that it's three times more expensive and three times slower. We would spend $60k and get a whopping two new Sun servers. Then all the engineers would start throwing jobs at it and it would be dog slow again. Do you know how many Linux machines we could have bought for that much?
Primarily we need computers for raw number-crunching (big simulations) and large memory (big circuits). Linux can handle these just fine, and it's frustrating when other groups blow a load of cash on more Sun equipment.
Komi
The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
It is not the price issue, clearly doing the job is not the same as doing the job well, doing it quickly or doing it easily.
Linux is not on a par with the very best commercial O/S in terms of smooth integration. Which does not matter for most nerd types, Linux is good enough and the benefits of being able to fix it when it is broken is often a bigger advantage.
But Apple is certainly at least as good as Sun at providing a smooth integrated O/S that just works. It is a long time since I have used a Sun machine, when I did back in 1995 their integration was pathetic, they had all this multimedia gubbins and none of the drivers worked. It was worth paying the premium for Dec hardware.
For at least five years Intel boxes have been more than sufficient for most needs and Linux has looked at least as good as Solaris so why pay five times the price?
Apple hardware fetches a premium, but not a huge premium. It makes a lot of sense if you want a Unix machine, you get a product that is well integrated, things work as you expect them to. That is worth real money.
The only reason people buy Sun is that there is quite a bit of enterprise software that only runs on Sun or Windows NT.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
- I have the Solaris 8 Intel and SPARC source CD's sitting right here. They were available to purchase for around $40 from sun.com a year back or so. This offer was open to everyone. I'm just a hobbyist dude, not a governmental organisation, eductaional institution -- i.e., I certainly stand no chance in hell of getting the Windows XP source code.
- The entire section on Licencing is just meaningless crap.
The conclusion gets it spot on::wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Not Solaris 9, nor Linux.
But the real question is... Could a SunPCI card installed in a Linux 2.6 x86 machine be incorporated into a NUMA subarchitecture?
I don't think this review can give us any idea about *real* performance of this workstation. Author just didn't manage to run any real benchmarks at all, exept some Java-based benchmark, which isn't very suitable to benchmark machines with different architectures. So i don't think it's fair to make statement about "the system which barely performs on the level of a P4 1.8ghz machine yet it sells for several times the price"
Look, I'm a long time solaris admin and I actually like to run most of my home systems on sun hardware with openbsd (can't wait to try freebsd soon; linux just doesn't work right on it yet). I love to remote console in. In the end, I have to agree with some of the author's disappointment.
First, it should be noted, you're a newbie or sucker if you're paying the retail price listed on the web site. Start your negotionations for the price by knocking of 1/3rd. This applys more for bigger systems, but it's close for small ones too. About support, skip it if this is your only system. I've found their warrenty support just fine and very helpful. However, if you're a medium sized shop, consider getting the platinum support. I've called all the big boys under super-boffo support accounts. HP has trouble just picking up the phone. IBM: we'll call you back when we found someone whom we think is who you want. Cisco: we sell that? Sun: two rings, serial number, knowledgable person opens case and starts working on it while getting [storage|OS|kernel|hardware|etc] expert on the phone, and in the mean time, the field engineer has already contacted to courier to get the new hardware there in under and hour, at three in the morning. I'm not exagerating either. Yes, this level is support is DAMN expensive, but it's comparatively cheaper than their competitors. The difference is that when you buy sun's deluxe support, they really mean it. For every other vendor, it's the same support faster.
Second, I am tired of them selling low quality workstations to their loyal users. The blade150 is flimsy and flakey; especially to those who remember the sparc2s. They were like armored pizze boxes! This new blade just looks like more of the same. The 150 has no normal way to play cds (for example). Why, oh WHY did you go with USB ports if you don't fully want to suport usb devices. The authors right about the keyboard and mouse quality. Well, it's not THAT bad - I consider the apple ones worse. But for the price, it should be much much better. Or better yet, fully support standard keyboards and mice. Map the sun keys to something else. Help bolthole.com make the mouse wheel work better. I just got the lowest end hp-ux workstation. It comes with dual scsi, and it could be considered similarly priced. IDE has always been chinzy. Serial ata would have been a great comprimse. My next work station? Mac.
Third, you're not SGI, and stop making your hardware look like it. Get over it. Frankly, pixar and other grapics outlets aren't in love with you anymore. Let it go. Move on. All the bioinfomatics I talk to are going apple.
Forth, clean up your packages, and MAKE PATCHING WORK RIGHT!!! HP and AIX - stick in a cd, reboot. BSD - painless. MS - automated. Even linux is better. Anyone running a large installation sun shop will tell you; sun patching sucks. Take a clue from bsd, linux or aix or even MS; make your systems easy to set up and administer, and you gain the respect and approval of the geeks who sign off on the tech side of the decision. I've lost trust and trust my solutions to patching much better than live update (at this point).
Last, what the hell is it with your cheap ass sales people. Is the sun logo so expensive that you can't afford to give out tshirts, cups and other good will crap to your biggest customers. Pizza?!? WTF! HP gave the whole department some of the best vendor shirts we've ever had. IBM gets us drinks and cigars. EMC tooks us to the matrix the day BEFORE it opened. I can go on and on. Instead, as one of your biggest clients in the region we get bad pizza and bad patches?!?
Ok... I got it out of my system. Thank for that.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
Now, to performance:
On both workstations you can get XVR-600 which is lightning fast and extra high quality. It's a Wildcat 4 chip (3D Labs) with 10-bit pixel precision and dedicated texture ram. The least expensive card like this for the PC is around $1K5 (Wildcat 4 7110) Also you can't get Linux drivers for it yet.
As for the P4/1.8GHz story try this for a test : Install MySQL on your linux PC and create a database with a table of about 5-6GB. Run alter table on it. Wait for it CRUMBLE TO DUST as it hits past 2GBs. Then get a Sun.
Opteron might be the only challenger to sparc (which is why Sun is pushing for opteron-based servers), but it's main faults are :
Still has no real applications ported to it.
Can't scale beyond 8-cpu's. If you don't need that - well... Plenty people do - in servers at least. This isn't a workstation issue, but is a server one.
Integrated memory controllers are a bitch on multi-cpu systems if you need one cpu to access all memory, while the other is still doing something. This is the main reason why sun still sells Blade 2000, now that Blade 2500 has hit the market.
As for true workstation features check out Blade 2000 (2 cpu's, UPA graphics, FC-AL disks), or Blade 2500 (2 cpu's, scsi disks). Both more expensive (especially Blade 2000 which uses Ultra III CPU's without integrated memory controllers, but with a real crossbar switch instead), but they are still A LOT less expensive than their SGI or IBM counterparts. Sun isn't competing with the PC's with this WS, it's just for the people who need a cheap ws for home, remote work or something like that. As the author of the article puts it "make no mistake: this is a workhorse, not a pony or a racehorse"
The great selling point of a Sun is that it seemes to maintain a "cool" factor much like Apple computers, not mass produced generic clones like Dell etc
No, the great selling point is that you don't have a hardware failure every 6 months like with Dell hardware. Dell hardware costs less, but you're getting what you pay for. Unfortunately, the CPU is actually the least of your worries. It's usually something like a disk controller or memory DIMMs. We had a RAID controller go on a Dell disk array and managed to corrupt the production database. Thankfully, not much had changed since the last backup. Still, that managed to defeat the entire purpose of a RAID array.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Sun has not made cutting edge hardware?
./configure; make; make install with it doesn't make it bad. And how cute... you spelled windows, windoze.
Quite frankly in recent years in the workstation market, no, no they haven't. They switched to PCI/IDE years ago for workstations. A majority of the Ultra series was PCI and not S/bus. The current Blades are more powerful than Ultra boxes. Sun is just behind the development curve of x86 (and PowerPC even for that matter) and they don't look to catch up anytime soon. Anyway, I can't really tell if you're defending old Sun hardware and blasting the new or if you're just trying to tear down my statement.
Would you please enlighten me?
Yes, I would.
I've got no idea why someone would want one of these blades. If you have software that has not been ported over to GNU, you could just use x86 Solaris or purchase a real Sun used.
That is a hugely humorous statement. You wouldn't. Companies that have applications that run on Sparc like having workstations of the same architecture for debuging purposes among others. And if you think that all applications _should_ be ported over to a GNU system, you should have your head examined as that's a very closed way of thinking. Many corporations don't see a need to port their (in many cases) proprietary software from something that already works just fine. And the last part of that statement, x86 Solaris is a joke and not compatible with binaries from Sparc Solaris (obviously) which doesn't help at all when debugging and/or using commercial applications. But the kicker, "purchase a real Sun used", um, these are real Sun's.. they even have the magical logo. Did you realize that a used Sun which I'm assuming you're going for an S/Bus Ultra with an UltraSparc IIe is dog slow compared to the UltraSparc III in that Blade. If you're so worried about disk performance, just put a SCSI PCI card and disk in it and shut up.
If Sun's goal is to comoditize thier hardware, they need to ditch the AMD windoze hunchback and embrace free software.
No, they don't need to embrace free software. Closed source, Proprietary, well supported software is just fine when it works well. Just because you can't feel special because you can't
They could steal most of the Xenon server market if they did this.
Huh? By making Solaris open-source they could steal most of the Xenon market? I have no idea what you're talking about.
Yes, it's very difficult to get data from the cheap XP box to your nice Sun.
Oh yeah, FTP, NFS, CDROM even... super hard.
The answer is to convince people that a GNU box works better than an XP box for any and all work related computing. Then they have their pick of ssh and all the traditional Unix networking software.
What? We have to convince people to use Linux instead of Windows XP... Um, this isn't even relevant to what we're talking about.
To sum up, you're pretty mixed on several things. The primary thing I was trying to educate you on in the parent post is that, these boxes are not for you. They're for research, development, and mission-critical applications. You will never have a need for it. Corporations on the other hand do for various reasons.
Ever time somebody brings up Sun, everyone goes "THOSE SPECS SUCK, KILL KILL KILL!". Sun equipment isn't about the specs. It's about the OS mostly and the support you get for that OS to run your extremely important applications. We can debate all day long about how they should've put SCSI in there instead of IDE or what have you but that's not the point of my posts. Sun has made some poor decisions in regards to their hardware but I really don't think that will stop customers (read: companies, not you) that already have Sun equipment from switching. It certainly won't gain them customers, but thats another debate.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
This guy has no idea what he is talking about.
...humvee is the way to go.
First things first - sun does not compete on speed. It competes on reliability and stability. Yeah my athlon 1800+ is way faster than my sun blade 100...but if you check the number of reboots, sun wins hands down with 0 in over 2 years.
Incidentally, I get more work done on the sun m/c.
Now to the article:
"...The 350w power supply is made by Samsung, and I would consider it barely adequate for this kind of computer....If I were designing this workstation I would have used a more robust power supply..."
Yeah sure. If you could you'd put in a nuclear reactor over there!!! Ever heard of power efficiency? Those guys had a good enough reason to stick with a 350W power supply...and trust me, those engineers are no idiots.
"...I wish it had a drive activity indicator LED and a reset button, which would add a lot of convenience for very little added cost..."
Reset button ? Sun ? get off your windowz box and work on a sun box for a year. Tell me if you *ever* need to reboot it. (for those who dont know - very few patches require reboots)
"... You're also subject to automatic software updates which may include further license restrictions. But at least there's no product activation, so it's not as bad as it could be...."
automatic s/w updates ? Solaris 8 ?
The "reviewer" is totally unqualified. He has no idea of the intended use of Sun machines. Nor does it seem he has ever worked on one. Comparing it with 32bit desktops is like comparing a car with a humvee.. Sure the former beats it in speed [hummer goes max ~80mph)..but in real life, especially when you are being bombarded
Out of the fortune 500, who needs a 64 or 112 processor system? Nobody.
This seriously has to be the stupidest post I have seen in a long time. Who do you think DOES need that kind of equipment? Just Industrial Light and Magic? Universities?
Fortune 500 companies have tens of thousands of employees and have custom designed statistical software processing data on every conceivable aspect of business.
Modern financial corporations are BUILT upon statistics. Investment firms will be analyzing millions of financial transactions all over the world every single day. Insurance companies also have very complex risk analysis tools with huge data sets.
Those are just two examples. The other fortune 500 companies are going to be companies like GM. Do you honestly think that a company like GM does not use the most sophisticated simulation software imaginable? They have been using
What do you think the entire IT industry is about? just simplifying data entry? The real benefit is the analysis of the data which aids in management decisions.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I know that many of the applications that we use for design, simulation and testing mostly run on Suns, but the vendors are quickly moving to Linux and we are more than willing to accept it. Why? Because a 3.2GHz P4 512k (Extreme Edition is next on the shopping list) with 512MB really does perform many times faster than something like a SunFire 280R cpu against cpu, and for many times less money!! It is only once you start getting into the need for 8GB of memory or dozens of cpu that you want to start looking at Sun for bang per buck.
I have always believed in UNIX on the back end, but it just doesn't pay to stick with Sun anymore. More and more, Linux and some form of RedHat (or whatever the vendors support) will take the place of the Suns.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
One thing to bear in mind is that this is a Blade.
The Blade is Sun's low-end series of machines. They are not fast. They are not reliable. I've seen a fair number of the SunBlade 100s overheat and die. I've had one Blade die over and over and over again. They have low-grade IDE hard drives, and the rest of the system is of comparable quality. There isn't any Sun magic in there to prevent the industry-standard low-end IDE drive or low-end PSU from failing, and the Sun components of the system are of comparable quality (in some cases, of comparable quality to an eMachine). Anyone who tells you otherwise is either clueless or trying to sell you something.
A high-end x86 machine will blow away these Blades on almost every benchmark, and cost a lot less. This model Sparc has higher IPC than an x86, but not 3x higher, and more than 3x lower MHz.
The reliability advantages of the Sun's come on higher-end machines. The throughput advantages come on higher-end machines. All of the standard advantages people have cited in this forum come from higher-end machines. Someone mentioned large databases -- the Blade 1500 only supports 4GB of RAM, and beyond that you're swapping to IDE. No performance boost there.
These machines are engineered for cost -- not speed, not reliability, not network throughput, not memory bandwidth, not upgradeability, and not anything else. We've bought Blades for just under a grand. When you consider how much more it costs to have your own custom-made CPU, motherboard, chipset, case, etc, without the advantages of mass-production, that's very, very cheap.
However, sometimes you need a Sun. Over here, we have some very high-end Suns (64 CPU machines, etc.). We have a lot of custom software that only runs on Suns. A lot of mainstream engineering applications do not have GNU/Linux ports, and we really don't want to be touching Windows. Having the network standardized to the same type of machine, and having everyone standardized to the same software helps a lot. This is one place where the low-end Suns fit in. You don't buy them because they are faster or better than an x86. You buy them because the high-end suns are faster and better than an x86, and it's often convenient to have matching low-end machines on your network.
It runs kind of OK I guess, about as fast as a 1.8GHz Pentium 4, which for comparison no-one would consider buying for a new PC these days. The Blade 1500 is faster than the Blade 150, but then again so is my Palm PDA. If your vendor still hasn't ported your application to Linux, then this workstation might make some sense while you wait for them to do it. If you're not a Sun shop, this won't interest you. If you *are* a Sun shop, then this will be an adequate last Sun workstation for you before you head off into the x86/Linux arena in 2005/2006.
Take a loving look at your SparcStation 20 you've got stashed away in the basement...they don't make them like they used to.
No kidding. A "review" written by a person who has no clue about the hardware or software he's reviewing.
He tried to install Gentoo and *bsd on it. If I were reviewing a Chevy and wanted to put a Honda engine in it for my review, then bitched because it wouldn't work, wouldn't I look like some sort of moron?
Solaris is an excellent operating system in terms of stability, reliability, and professional support, but you'll find it quite difficult to set up and maintain it on your own and it can be difficult to find much software for it.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? I can find a ton of software for Solaris, and I personally find it easy as pie to set up. (Of course I've been working with Solaris for about 8 years now.) Installing GIMP? WTF?
Solaris is not anything like GNU/Linux or even the *BSDs
Yea no kidding pal, thanks for the big revelation. Solaris/SunOS has been around longer and they aren't the same operating system.
there is no large, friendly, easily accessible community like there is for the Free Unix projects.
Have you lost your freakin' mind? How about sunfreeware.com? comp.os.solaris? #solaris on ANY of the IRC networks? Not to mention the fact that a great many of the people who hang out in the "free unix projects" community are also Solaris nerds.
Solaris in its current form can never be Free Software or even open-source because of all of the proprietary code that it contains.
No shit Dick Tracy. This just makes me want to smack him. Is this a review of Sun's Solaris license? Or is this supposed to be a rewview of a piece of hardware?
you can't use Solaris 8 in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of a nuclear facility (so if you can't use a top-tier OS like Solaris, what DO nuclear designers, engineers and sysadmins use to run their computers? Windows 95?).
Really? Interesting that GE Power Systems uses it. (They design nuclear stuff all the time.) NASA uses it to launch rockets, and hey, Java is helping run the Mars rover Spirit.
What this clause means is that a nuclear power facility is supposed to go through special channels to get software and operating systems certified for use in their facility. The version of Solaris you have is not certified for such use. (Yes, there are different versions for different applications.)
Measuring performance was a very difficult task because of the amount of reading, research, and configuration that had to go into Solaris 8 to get it to compile benchmark programs.
Which should be read as, "I didn't know what the hell I was doing and have no idea how to review a piece of hardware so I didn't really do anything other than try to customize my desktop and then install Linux and *bsd on it."
This is no desktop system. It may look like one, it may in some ways act like one, but make no mistake: this is a workhorse, not a pony or a racehorse.
Well, you're partly right. When you compare it with like systems, it keeps perfect pace with the pack and I'm sure outperforms many of them. But it is a workhorse. Not to be compared with Apples and Intel systems. Sun hardware and the Solaris OS are not designed to be pretty, they're designed to be bulletproof. They might not get you there the fastest, and they may not be pretty, but you'll get where you need to go quickly, efficiently, and SAFELY.
I think he should have just typed, "Well, it isn't my Linux desktop, so, you know, it sucks."
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
We were going to spend $15K about 3 years ago to upgrade an ailing E450 to max out proc and memory. We were supporting multiuser MATLAB/Simulink .
Instead, we threw that money at 6 dual Athlon XPs.
In 3 months, the E450 was only being used to run distributed.net. If a single box was given 2 jobs, it could complete them 225% faster than the Sun, and in the worse case, 150% faster in a contrived memory constrained situation.
Multiply by 6 and we easily more than tripled the capacity, while reducing overhead costs/maintenance.
Sigh. Sun was pissed at us too. We did this a number of times. PC hardware (if you make good choices) has caught up. What are you going to do?
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Looking around at either the stack of Ultras and SPARCStations by my right foot, or the Enterprise server and SunRays over thattaway, it's clear to me that the Sun selling point is not 'coolness' or prestige. You buy a Sun to get a UNIX system that's:
If all that is needed is a compute workstation on which some variety of free UNIX or Linux will run, then no the Sun workstation is not the most cost-effective option. However, you don't just buy a computer from Sun, you tend to get a full five-year support package as well. BTW on the subject of free UNIXen, interesting to note that for education, and possibly other purposes, the SOlaris source code is sometimes available :-).
Oh and Sun, FFS stop calling your workstations "blades" would you?