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Sun Sacks UltraSparc V and 3300 Employees
bender writes "According to this article, Sun Microsystems has cancelled the next generation UltraSparc V processor even though the chip had already taped out. Perhaps this has something to do with the recent partnerships with AMD and Fujitsu?"
They can't compete with the cheap hardware. Sure their HW and SW is top notch, but it's just as easy and cheap to through a small linux cluster together to get the high performance needed. (ala Virginia Tech Mac cluster). Sad to say, but I think that the innovative ideas will be squashed by the cheap alternatives. This goes for many companies other than just Sun though.
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Retail Retreat
I once worked for US West (a local phone company) and they had entire ROOMS full of nothing but SUN equipment - actually running. I worked in IT for them and I still can't imagine what all of these systems did.
Anyway, the article is pretty clear that the new Chip platform is simply being eliminated because it's a needless step inbetween their IV and the new processors that are lining up for release... in 2 years.
So I guess this means I'm feeding a troll that didn't read the article.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Over beer, this is the way my friend and I see the future:
.NET to Solaris. Mono dies swiftly.
0. Gosling leaves Sun for IBM.
1. All Sun hardware will run on AMD
2. Sun will port
3. Java bytecode will target the CLR
4. Sun/MS/HP vs. Intel/Dell/IBM/Linux
5. Apple keeps innovating
The Register has it here. Sun Kills off Sparc V and Gemini and releases Niagara and Rock. Not as big a deal as most of you make it out to be.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Every time I think of Sun, I think about my commute home past their headquarters. In the summer of 2001 (if memory serves correct), I drove by via San Tomas and saw a tree in one of those planter boxes - like the wooden boxes that trees come in when you buy them from a nursery.
This tree was a HUGE oak tree though - had to be 100 feet tall at least, with a trunk that was probably 5 feet wide. And it sat there in a big planter box waiting to be "planted." The transportation costs alone must have cost a fortune.
The point is, while the industry began plunging into the abyss, Sun was farting around buying full-blown oak trees to make their campus look "pretty" - while other companies were working to stay afloat.
It seemed then that they had their blinders on, and while a fair amount of companies are stabilizing now here in the valley, they seem to be trying to stop the bleeding a bit late.
Perhaps if they'd spent less time farting around with building campuses and more time on building their market, they'd be in better shape. After all - if you let your employees go, who's going to look at the trees?
Just a thought... it seemed symbolic to me of what was wrong there - perspective. Shame though... they're so much more likeable than MS.
Those who read the article will see that this is far from Sun getting out of the chip business and moving to Windows, but rather a retooling that will allow them to return to profitablility in the near future. Instead of the UltraSparc V, they're going to stick with modifications to the UltraSparc IV for the time being while they work on putting out their multicore followup, the Nigara. Personally, I'm glad to see this. Sun has been a stagnating company in the hardware department for a while now, and I think a good shakeup is what they need. There will always be a need for the rock-solid server market that they fill, and x86 just doesn't cut it in a lot of cases. So, don't worry, Sun isn't going anywhere, and if they did, someone else would step in to fill their place (and it wouldn't be MS &/| Intel).
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
BTW, am I the only person that thinks Slashdot's one sided "sun is dying" post is an attack on Sun? They settle with MS and the OSS crowd turns their back on them almost over night.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
And another group of several thousand highly-qualified people lose their careers! Just what society needs! Another example of how hard work and dedication just don't matter any more.
Oh, and don't forget to "keep your skills current."
"So, what was your last job?"
"I was a microprocessor designer."
"What makes you think you're qualified to work at Lying Rat Bastards Inc.?"
"I have a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Cal Tech"
"Well, unless you graduated last year, I'm afraid your skills aren't current. Thanks for stopping by."
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
These are big, generally single threaded applications. In 2001, we used Suns becuase they supported memory sizes we needed. Gate simulation needed about 5GB of physical memory. P&R more like 10GB. For smaller jobs, we used x86 boxes. They wern't just cheaper. They were faster.
But now EDA vendors are starting to support AMD64. With Sun's announcment, the performance gap is going to get wider. No Ultrasparc V. Niagara and Rock won't help, even when they get here.
"The technique, which won't result in chips larger than those from competitors, sacrifices the ability to perform one task extremely quickly for the ability to do multiple independent tasks simultaneously"
No good. No good at all. How long before Synopsys, Cadence, and Magma do the unthinkable and actually drop support for Sparc/Solaris?
They didn't give up on it... they finished it.
On the surface it seems silly to cancel a chip that was basically done. The vast majority of money put toward a chip is in the design, not the manufacturing. But when looking at the potential of having 7 different chip architectures in the marketplace at the same time in a couple of years, it really makes sense to simplify the product line a bit. Keep the tried-and-true, and finish the biggest capability jump. They just cut out an intermediate step.
I'm staying with US III machines for the next couple of years. In two years, say there was a new chip out that was only a littel better than the US III, and the Niagara coming out within months... I'd certainly decide to wait for Niagara and make the biggest jump possible (so I could sit on it a while). I suspect they'd have hardly sold any USV machines.
Right. That's why Sun was recently seen in a Redmond park giving Microsoft a blow job for a cool 2 mil.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The PrimePower 850 just blew away the V880, even with 2 less cpu. The PrimePowers use Sun Solaris and are 99.9999% * compatible because (I didn't realise this) that Sun do not own the Sparc design, Sparc Consortium do. I do not believe that Fujitsu will buy Sun outright because they simply do not have the money and have been doing lots of expensive merging of various subsidiary companies this year to save costs; e.g. the old ICL has become Fujitsu Services along with some other straggler companies including Fujitsu's Sun reseller company.
I would say that Fujitsu PrimePower are about 1 year ahead of Sun in terms of power & speed and in our tendering process were a lot cheaper as well.
Probably worth mentioning that I didn't buy Fujitsu in the end because the machines were not certified to use Oracle RAC - instead, I went for HP (linux) - the business benefits for linux outweighed the change from solaris.
* PrimePower won't run SunCluster - that scared me a bit about fujitsu's compatibility claims.
When it comes to Microsoft, linux and the OSS talk a good game, but it's sun fighting the fight.
You think microsoft was going to find a way to kill linux before? Imagine how much easier it will be now without all of sun's money and time spent in the court system.
The OSS made a big mistake alienating Sun that is going to hurt them. The more and more I read the various OSS 'news' sources, the more I think that somoene, maybe IBM, has gotten the OSS community to take on their fight aginst. MS.
Every one applauds IBM for their fight against SCO, an annoyance, and ignores Sun for their fight against microsoft.
THIS IS what their customers want. Sun has always been criticized for not listening to their customers. Their customers want Sun to stop fighting MS and start working with them on better ingegration. So they put asside some of their principles and work things out with Microsoft. And now the OSS community criticizes them about it.
Let's see, customers on one hand, a bunch of ungrateful people on the other that no matter how much time and money you invest in them, how much software you give them, they just keep asking for more and more and trying to stab you in the bback whenever they can.
Wake up peaple, if it's such a big deal now that Sun isn't fighting microsoft, why didn't you make it a big deal when Sun WAS fighting microsoft tooth and nail. And in most cases winning.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
If I had mod points they would have been yours.
Sun has done a huge effort, trying to make people open their eyes (Perhaps a little too much, with McNealy alienating most people with his comments), and they never had any serious backing by the OSS crowd. Damn shame that they've had to fold, and damn shame that people are now complaining that they've "given up on their principles" - Geez... Why didn't people support those principles in the first place?
If you can't walk the walk, don't talk the talk
My <1000 UID is with a hot chick
I'm trying really hard to remember a case where a company stopped "fighting MS and start(ed) working with them" and came out a winner in the end. Dell and Intel might be considered successful partnerships with Microsoft but they are partnerships in name only since Microsoft tends to dictate all the terms and conditions.
t ly _dumps_windows_opengl/
SGI tried to stop fighting and work with Microsoft on Fahrenheit among other things. They pretty much cratered the company in the process. Not sure anyone remembers Fahrenheit, but it was an attempt to develop a next gen 3D API beyond Direct3D, OpenGL and Performer. It became very obvious from day one that it was mostly designed to divert SGI's attention from backing OpenGL against Direct3D. SGI was dreaming of defining the 3D standard for all those millions of Windows desktops. Microsoft wasn't concealing the fact that everything going on there was irrelevant unless it could be shoehorned in to Direct3D:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/29/ms_quie
Microsoft simply DOESN'T work with its competitors. It very rarely works with its partners. Its partnerships tend to be a smaller companies who think by partnering with Microsoft they are going to be "made men" in the mafia sense of the term, but at some point if the project is successful or not Microsoft will, one way or another "whack" the partner. The one strategy most likely to lead to a desirable outcome is for the small company to sell its assets to Microsoft, probably for less than they are worth, but still make a tidy profit and run.
Microsoft seduces, it bullies, it uses slight of hand misdirection, it uses, it simply doesn't partner. One thing Scooter used to have right at SUN, you either fight Microsoft or you die, the only other viable strategy is to look small, don't get to profitable, and hope Microsoft doesn't notice you before you cash out.
@de_machina
Ok - here goes my carma, but I just have to say it.
The cancellation of UltraSparc V is probably a good thing for everyone. US V was to be a new design, not fully compatible with the old ones, but instead leaning towards Itanic. This is good, mainly because it means that they will continue to focus on Sparc compatible chips. This means more stable hardware for us. Also this means that they will continue the focus towards multithread/multicore chips - which are terrific for server usage. KISS design, the way it should be done.
The alliance with Fujitsu is definitely a good thing. Fujitsu has great potential as a chip maker, and their Sparc CPU's are just as good as those made by Sun. What's bad is the supporting logic (Fujitsu-Siemens sparcs have limited LOM and are more expensive). This "union" if it happened would probably mean that we would see future sparcs with the best from both worlds.
Even the MS "pact" is not bad. It gets more money to sun, so that they can continue with the work, and shows us the perspective of using Sun instead of MS software for our server, while still being able to support MS clients. This would allow us to phase out MS from the corporate server pool easily, and also open room for Linux and other unices on the corporate desktop. Weather we like it or not MS is the current office standard and it will take us a lot of work to get it out of there. Not for the "office" (i.e. word, excel) but for the "groupware" software as the main backbone (outlook, exchange, and the new products).
The only "bad" thing is the layoff of 3000+ workers from the US, and the potential move of sun's cpu production from T.I. (and the US) to Fujitsu. And this is noting bad for the computing industry. It is bad for the US economy, but that's just the US. The rest of the world - and the unix community will probably end up benefiting from this.