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Sun & Fujitsu Team On SPARC Chips & System

Posted by timothy on from the abstraction-to-abstraction dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Sun and Fujitsu just announced a 20-year partnership to jointly develop SPARC based technology and systems. It looks like the long-predicted partnership that was hinted at earlier has finally come to pass in a much more comprehensive manner than I've heard anyone predict, i.e. not just chips, but a unified range of systems. My guess: Sun drops Ultrasparc III to provide the Throughput computing chips for the low end / web / network stuff, and takes up the Fujitsu provided SPARC64 chips for the high end and workstation market. Will this spark a new RISC renaissance for Sun and Fujitsu? Or is it a last gasp before Opteron / PowerPC / Itanium crush them? I for one will be interested to see what systems and processors come out of this. This could really revitalize the SPARC system market, especially if Sun's work on Throughput computing proves out."

3 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Throughput computing by shoppa · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I always thought Sun's only realistic market for "Throughput computing" (maximizing ops/watt) was dense server farms (e.g. blades). Now it is true that this market is playing out quite like everyone (especially Sun) wanted it to, but it is a real market.

    For thin-client stuff, while low power consumption is a priority, it's not a big enough one to warrant the amount of money that Sun and others have spent on it. Maybe, just maybe, as a spinoff.

    These "find a market for our new processor" discussions are getting a little depressing. I remember being excited about the DEC Alpha for embedded applications, but since then it all feels hollow.

  2. What's actually going on here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1) Sun is having troubles convincing its partners that its multi-core "throughput computing" chip will be competitive. That Gartner report is causing people to ask questions about whether Sun can deliver on its promises. And who wants a 500Mhz 16 core chip anyway? Think of the memory bandwidth problems!

    2) Fujitsu Sparc core spanks Suns own core.

    My prediction? Sun will abandon its multi-core, asynchronous research pipedreams and farm out all CPU design to Fujitsu. CPU design is a very costly (comoditised) business for Sun to be in, and as Apple have shown its the system that matters, not the processor.

  3. Throughput Computing and the Transputer by dnnrly · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sun's description of Throughput Computing and their approach of putting multiple processor cores reminds me of what Inmos tried to do with the Transputer before they became STMicroelectronics. The idea was to have many small processors positioned close to each other, communicating between each other closely. I seem to recall seeing transputers on eBay a while back for huge amounts of money. By all accounts, a transputer board was a very useful piece of kit for the right appplications!