Slashdot Mirror
Sun & Fujitsu Team On SPARC Chips & System
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."
...Japan is called "Land of the rising Sun"
Hehehe... hope they know that Sun wants to give their hardware away.
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.
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.
You were misled by the OP, but RTFA please. The press release said they're expanding their relationship that's already existed for 20 years. Not that they're announcing a 20 year partnership.
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!
> Will this spark
Ha ha ha, very funny.
BoD
Did they have to drive from California to Boston for the ceremony?
;^)
And which one wore the dress?
I have to stop wasting so much time reading Slashdot. It's interfering with my crystal meth addiction.
NEW YORK, NY -- July 8, 1987 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc., introduced today the Sun-4 family of 10-MIPS supercomputing workstations and servers that give users the performance of a VAX 8800 system at one-tenth the price.
...
...
Sun also announced that it will license the new SPARC architecture... SPARC licensees announced today are Fujitsu Microelectronics, Cypress Semiconductor, and Bipolar Integrated Technology.
Sigh.
Please try to remember that entry to the 'Top 500' list is as much about your interconnect topology and technology as the capabilities of the processors used.
It is a measure of one, and exactly one benchmark, LINPACK
Machines which are not well suited to this benchmark, or do not have network technologies/topologies well matching linpacks requirements will perform poorly at it, but possibly very well for their chosen purpose.
Good examples of this are the WETA digital clusters used in parts of the LOTR films, which are great for rendering, but hampered seriously in their linpack result by their 100MBit standard ethernet connections.
Another good example of this is the Virginia Tech G5 cluster, which gets a LARGE boost from it's infiniband interconnects (well, it will when Apple finish giving them the new machines... eventually..).
Not that I am defending SPARC's rather lackluster performance these days, just making a rather important point.
Those SPARC boxes better get a LOT cheaper VERY fast if they intend to find any real home in HPC.
They have another market in high end engineering desktops. For people who design chips and other detailed components and need to simulate them there is still a market for their work stations.
Now, the other chips are catching quick on this so they need to stay ahead or they could loose that market too.
Evolution or ID?
Baloney. I've had power drop out and kill Sun machines and they just come right back. Are you talking about file system check? Just turn on logging in /etc/vfstab and even that goes away, just like the same reason you use ext3 instead of ext2 on Linux.
That is a slick move- offer free hardware- and then team up with a hardware company to pay for it. Brilliant.
And its not going good.
The reason Sun is losing is because the SparcV should be out that is comptetive agaisnt (theoritical) agaisnt the power, mips, and Opteron.
TI who actually fabricates teh chips is pulling a Motorolla in order to gain more profits by not upgrading their plants.
Either they innovate and skip the sparcIV and leep to the sparcV and develop the sparcVI or give in to Opteron now and save the company.
http://saveie6.com/
Besides, power failures shouldn't happen; you should have UPS on all important servers so power failures shouldn't be a problem at all.
So yesterday there was the post about hardware being free and today there's news about Sun partnership for UltraSparc. Make up your freaking mind SUN. I still like SUN hardware for dense deployments where you got tons of racks, since Intel and AMD both run considerably hotter than UltraSparc. Sun needs to make up its mind about whether they believe UltraSparc has a future and stick to it. PC hardware is still isn't as reliable as high end Unix, so it's stupid to drop their R&D for high end systems. Some things simply scale better vertically than horizontally.
And you seem to not do your research.
:)
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Fujitsu
The company was established in 1935 under the name Fuji Tsshinki Seiz, a spinoff of the Fuji Electric company, this in turn being a joint venture between the Furukawa mining company and German conglomerate Siemens.
Or how about more obviously....
http://pr.fujitsu.com/en/profile/profile.html
Fujitsu is a leading provider of customer-focused information technology and communications solutions for the global marketplace. Since Fujitsu's establishment in 1935, we have maintained a commitment to cutting-edge technological innovation and uncompromising product quality.
So only 50 years out there old chap.
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
I wonder if funding a kind of open-sourced game development platform wouldn't help the hardware manufacturers (e.g. Sun in this case for the processors and ATI etc. for the graphics) sell their wares. All 3D-engine stuff wide open and free, so that a prospective game maker would not have to buy an engine license.
Problems of course:
- need an installed base to sell enough games
- state of the art engine does not grow on trees
- willingness of hardware types to work together
Possible Pros:
- open standard encourages performance improvements for the next generation that don't break older applications
- massively distributed bug fixing
Why 'give in' to Opteron? It fits in well with the Sparc kit and Sun are already aggressively marketing Opteron.
Sun are capable of having a strategy that can move with the market, as well as dictating to the market, as appropriate. I get tired of people on Slashdot claiming one company or product is 'dead' just because it has a competitor.
Sun also aren't particularly 'losing', as you put it. Unit shipments were up 26% for the first quarter of 2004, with the UIIIi systems selling extremely well - and they're positioned directly against the Xeon based stuff that Slashdot readers tell us is going to take over the world.
With the Millenium project dead and buried Sun is relying on Ultra SPARC III to carry the comapny until "Mid 2006" when Fujitsu's and Sun's products will be shared between them. The current Niagra design (from Afara) is so low end that Sun will be luck to sell a few hundred systems based on it. If they didn't need a throughput computing product on the market RIGHT NOW they would have killed Niagra already.
When the inevitable schedule slips on Niagra II and Rock come to light (the original Niagra from Afara was "almost done" when Sun bought them two years ago, it's only just taped out) Sun will have no choice but to fall on it's sword and admit defeat. The company might survive if it can convince enough customers to recompile and move to Opteron based systems while sticking with Solaris, but that's going to be a hard sell when they can recompile for linux and not be locked into Sun's software/services stack.
They're not dropping an architecture - the architecture's still the same - Sparc.
UltraSparc has not been solidly beaten - UIV is out there now and doing well in the market. It's what follows it that will be jointly developed with Fujitsu, which will operate alongside the forthcoming Niagara and Rock multicore CPUs. Hardly a case of abandoing anything.
The fact that there's another company investing in and developing their own Sparc CPUs validates the whole architecture in the first place.
I agree with you that the strategy makes sense - low end with the 'i' range and Opteron Solaris/Solaris x86/Linux, with Solaris/Sparc for the mid to highend.
I don't think the Itanium is going to be crushing anything in it's short lifetime. However, the PowerPC/Opteron chips are putting the smack down quite nicely about now. We need them to bring back that Open spec for PPC hardware so we can get some serious speed and off of Intel..... !
-m
http://www.invisik.com
Sun and Fujitsu just announced a 20-year partnership to jointly develop SPARC based technology and systems.
They have had a partnership for 20 years - they aren't announcing a new one.
My guess: Sun drops Ultrasparc III
Sun is already shipping the Ultrasparc IV. Nice guess!
to provide the Throughput computing chips for the low end / web / network stuff,
They have already announced that this is exactly what they are going to do. Again: nice guess!
and takes up the Fujitsu provided SPARC64 chips for the high end and workstation market.
Yesterday's announcement was all about using SPARC64 on the high end. Usually the trick is reading between the lines - not reading the lines themselves.
Sun also announced that they will be using Opterons in their new workstation line - not SPARC64.
Will this spark a new RISC renaissance for Sun and Fujitsu? Or is it a last gasp before Opteron / PowerPC / Itanium crush them?
Itanium has gone white dwarf. The only thing it will be crushing is itself.
Opteron is not going to crush Sun. They have announced that they are shipping multiple Opteron boxes (1-8 way servers and 1-2 way workstations).
This could really revitalize the SPARC system market, especially if Sun's work on Throughput computing proves out.
This doesn't even make sense. The Fujitsu/Sun machines are not the Throughput Computing systems that Sun has been talking about for months. Throughput compututing is Niagara/Rock - the Sun-only CPUs.
- Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"
...welcome our new Sun&Fujitsu overlords!
The real upside of of zones is when combined with N1 Grid. I know it sounds really amorphous, but with zones it really starts to make sense. Imagine rolling out a new zone or dozens when needed across a datacenter full of stock Solaris 10 machines (x86 or SPARC). The storage is on EMC or Hitachi, so you just hand out LUNS like candy for the zone's "/" with predefined pkgs and patches and you have a really dynamic environment for Oracle 10g, webservices, etc.
This is the story that needs to be told, but I sometimes think Sun is using Novell's old marketing team.
DISCLAIMER: I work for Sun but I try not to drink the company Kool Aid.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run