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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."

13 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. that's why... by hutkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...Japan is called "Land of the rising Sun"

  2. Wonder how this fits into the free hardware by uberkuba · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hehehe... hope they know that Sun wants to give their hardware away.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

    1. Re:What's actually going on here... by turgid · · Score: 4, Funny
      And who wants a 500Mhz 16 core chip anyway? Think of the memory bandwidth problems!

      Who wants a single (or dual) core 5GHz chip anyway? Think of the memory bandwidth problems.

      --
      Stick Men
    2. Re:What's actually going on here... by turgid · · Score: 4, Informative

      You run Solaris on SPARC processors. Solaris is highly multi-threaded from the ground up. It's extremely fine-grained. It also has some sophisticated algorithms for migrating threads to the most appropriate processor based on things like memory locality and load. (Forgive me if my terminology isn't terribly accurate, I'm not an OS kernel expert). The Niagra and ROCK processors are designed to execute highly multithreaded loads. Fujitsu SPARC64 is more traditional, in that it is designed for loads with fewer concurrent threads. By adopting Fujitsu's high-end gear, Sun gets performance on less thread-intesive loads too. Now Sun and Fujitsu have a horse for every course, so to speak. If I were HP trying to sell itanic boxes, and cranky old (soon to be exterminated) PA-RISC kit, I'd be very worried.

      --
      Stick Men
    3. Re:What's actually going on here... by jschottm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > as Apple have shown its the system that matters, not the processor.

      Yes, but remember, Apple was hurting for quite some time after Motorola stopped working on high end PPC chips. The stagnant G4 hurt Apple - I use encoding software that had started out on Macs but moved the focus of its development to Windows after the the G4 lost steam. The apple version still exists and is supported, but lacks some of the features of the Windows version. And while I've not had a chance to run it on a G5, a dual Athlon MP utterly spanks a dual G4.

      The G5 certainly helps, but it still leaves Apple at the mercy of an outside supplier.

  5. Re:20 years? by syphoon · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  6. 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!

  7. They announced their partnership? by farmhick · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  8. Re:20 years? by Ratbert42 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
    ...

  9. Re:Crush Fujitsu... maybe. by thesupraman · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  10. Re:sun problem by grigori · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.