The Return of the Sun Workstation, With AMD's Help

Hack Jandy writes "Would you be surprised to hear Sun is the lowest cost Tier 1 dual-Opteron provider? AnandTech benchmarks Sun's newest w2100z and includes some sneak peaks at Solaris 10 and Java Desktop System 2. The biggest surprise at the end - it costs less than IBM and HP's configurations. Has Sun learned from the demise of SGI workstations that relying on one processor architecture is harmful?" CrzyP adds "They perform various benchmarks including 2D/3D rendering, compiling, encryption, and thermal and noise performance, and compare the 64-bit Sun box with various other configurations, including varying operating systems."

Comments

some info about Java Desktop

[hsmith]

Since the article doesn't link it

http://wwws.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/

I dunno

[Anonymous Coward]

Has Sun learned from the demise of SGI workstations that relying on one processor architecture is harmful?

The lesson I'd learn from SGI is that jumping into the WinTel server market is harmful.

Re:Their Xeon trade-in program is still going on t

[Jahf]

Actually the best way to buy a w2100z, if you don't need it -today- but do want it cheap, is to buy off of Ebay. They are regularly going for about 1/2 the retail price.

And AMD isn't subsidizing this at all, at least not actively. Sun just happens to be willing to sell for much lower than their traditional margins on these products to get back some of the workstation market. They have realized that workstations were a wedge into the hearts and minds of the admins who later (sometimes years later) made decisions on servers. And Sun has some very well priced Opteron servers now, too.