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

Posted by timothy on from the not-black-hole-sun dept.

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."

49 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. some info about Java Desktop by hsmith · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since the article doesn't link it

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

    1. Re:some info about Java Desktop by Short+Circuit · · Score: 2, Informative

      And a pre-emptive strike against FUD: No, it doesn't run on the Java VM.

      --
      tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
    2. Re:some info about Java Desktop by tuffy · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Because your desktop would be a slow, bloated piece of cr*p, where each simple application would consume about 80MB??

      Nono, each application would run from the same Java runtime. It would bloat up to fill 1GB of RAM and run very very slowly. And, just as you're getting work done, a NullPointerException would take down the entire desktop. Assuming one can set all the proper CLASSPATHs to get the damn thing running in the first place.

      --

      Ita erat quando hic adveni.

  2. I dunno by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    1. Re:I dunno by upsidedown_duck · · Score: 2, Insightful


      Sun is not taking the retarded path of SGI or Intergraph. The Sun Opteron boxes are certified for Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Sun will provide Solaris or Linux, but customers provide their own Windows (last I checked). For companies who already have Windows site licenses, this is not a problem at all.

      Sun are keeping SPARC for data centers and engineering workstations and adding Opteron for everything that Opteron is good at. Sun is making Java and JDS the common thread among the two product lines, leaving people a choice of hardware platform and OS kernel (Solaris/SPARC, Solaris/x86, or Linux/x86).

      --
      -- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
  3. As I remember... by NoMoreNicksLeft · · Score: 3, Insightful

    SGI started going downhill about the same time they first offered a WinNT machine. But yeh, it's a good thing to homogenize all our processor architectures, because there is only one perfect CPU, and Intel makes it.

    Am I the only one who longs for when we actually had a choice of CPUs?

    1. Re:As I remember... by Reivec · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What are you talking about? Maybe I am just not detecting sarcasm? But right now AMD is kicking some intel butt when it comes to benchmarks... and that is not counting any non x86 procs. I am sure there are arguments for other chips being better due to a better design structure. I personally think the P4 was a bad design from the get go and now they are starting to realize that themselves once they got to a point where they can't just keep ramping up the clock speed. Thus AMD has pulled ahead.

    2. Re:As I remember... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Insightful
      And x86 isn't bad, in itself... it's bad that it will be one of the few (only?) left. That annoys me. That people think it a good thing, that's plain frightening.

      Can you name one feature (other than endianness or a few percent benchmark edge) that a user or even a C developer would notice that's different between an modern X86 CPU and any other modern CPU?

      X86 is just an instruction bytecode format. The internals of today's X86 CPUs vary almost as much as the internals of CPUs with differring instruction sets.

    3. Re:As I remember... by homer_ca · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's not so much that Intel is the perfect CPU. It's just that economies of scale in the x86 CPU market give it a huge advantage over other CPU architectures, and this effect was amplified by the Gigahertz Race between Intel and AMD. They can simply afford to spend more on R&D and sell CPUs for less because of the huge x86 PC market. The only other company in the running is IBM, and they have a good chunk of the desktop CPU market too thanks to Apple.

    4. Re:As I remember... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes, most CPUs have converged to a very similar feature set. However, I don't think that you can blame it on the "X86ness" of it. It's just because those are the features that seem to work with today's chip-making technology. It's probably the same reason that all modern jet airliners look almost exactly the same.

    5. Re:As I remember... by Slack3r78 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      So because they use an external interface that's less than perfect, your main stream solutions are horrible chips? You do realize that, interally, almost any modern x86 CPU is very RISC-like in nature right?

      I suppose the 64-bit versions are different, but if they still run x86 instructions... what's the point?

      My car gets 40mpg on the highway, but if it still burns nasty old gasoline... what's the point?

      Really, other than as a matter of academic holier-than-thou showery, your position is a bit silly. While modern chips are held up some by some legacy underpinnings (BIOS, register starvation in IA32), dismissing the whole architechture as useless for that reason is pointless and burying your head in the sand.

      x86 will likely continue to dominate the mainstream for years to come, while RISC/EPIC/Whatever architechtures will be relegated to high end use where their specific strengths matter. If you're happy with a machine significantly underpowered by the standards of *any* modern architechture or dropping several grand on a specialized workstation on ideological ground, then hey, more power to you. Myself, I'll go with what makes the most sense for getting work done in the most economical manner possible.
    6. Re:As I remember... by NoMoreNicksLeft · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you weren't a AC retard, I could tell you how to turn off sigs, and expect you to at least be alerted that someone replied.

      By definition, sigs can't be on topic. They're personal, and can be a pun or joke, or, simply because we're allowed to use href's in them, I assume CmdrTaco wants us to be able to link to some site we find interesting. More than a few people link to a homepage of their own, or a project they work on. This is what I'm doing.

      My comments are often trollish, even more often sarcastic. Some might find them any of the following: annoying, stupid, offensive, misinformed, irrelevant, hypocritical, brilliant, biased, and/or amusing. They are sometimes long, often only a paragraph or two, and when suited to the article, occassional single sentence. Once, on an "ask slashdot - favorite spreadsheet?" only two letters... 'sc'. The tiny, tiny spreadsheet app for console (which is actually quite cool).

      On that comment, people accused me of the same thing, btw, but at least they had an excuse... 2 little letters, I mean, I can see how they'd be easy to overlook. So what's your excuse?

      I mean, I did ask a question worth asking, I think. The summary of the article mentioned SGI, and also how they Sun was using commodity CPUs. And not only do I not like the "mass extinction event" of CPUs we're seeing today, I remember in particular SGI's first windows workstation, and how it wasn't a year later we were hearing about all their problems. Maybe it's not causation, but at the very least it might well be an indicator.

      I figure I own about 80 computers, I've lost count. 5 amigas, 3 Atari STs, a NeXT, sparcstations, an SGI Indy, a slew of 68k macs, TRS-80 6000, PCs, an alpha multia, vaxstations, and damn near every single home computer of the 80s. I even have a 1975 PDP-11/04. Most of them are connected to my hybrid ethernet/tokenring/arcnet/localtalk/ATM155 /corvus/starlan/etc home network. I think I have a right to mention the fact that we've been reduced to just 2 major CPU architectures.

      Or maybe you don't like anonymous networks. Or maybe you like freenet to the exclusion of all else. Or even possibly you take issue with my recruitment efforts, on a project that by it's nature has to be invitation only, and invitation to people to a foreign country no less (how many of you have 20+ friends outside your country's borders?). These would at least be valid.

      But I take exception to being called a link spammer. If you hate link spammers, pester the editors to stop posting that roland piqueville shit, where every article is a single link to something on his blog. I'm not trying to get a higher rank in google, it's blocked by my robots.txt! I just want a few people to inquire, and help me build another internetwork, for crying out loud! One where we can't be sued for lame shit. And once every few months, someone asks for a connection, and maybe 1 in 5 of those remain for any length of time. I've never seen you bitch at people offering gmail invites, even that asshat that offers them in return for his ipop scheme, which is about as Ponzi as anything I've seen here.

      So just lay off it. Or learn to turn sigs off, or at the very least, don't post as a fucking AC coward.

  4. Re:The chance *BSD will run on these things: by ebooher · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't understand here, why are you saying there is a 0% chance of the machines running *BSD? Is it meant to be humorous? Because obviously they will run *BSD very well. Am I feeding the troll here?

    --
    "Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
  5. What would really be surprising by overshoot · · Score: 4, Interesting
    would be if they actually got their X11 implementation working almost as well as an etch-a-sketch.

    I finally escaped from 7 years on a Sun workstation to a Linux box. Solaris had its advantages, but X11 wasn't one of them and CDE wasn't another.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
    1. Re:What would really be surprising by Jahf · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The magic of Opteron is that you can be using a Sun workstation, getting low-cost high-performance Opteron CPUs and also be running Linux. I think that was the purpose of the article.

      (written on a Sun w2100z dual Opteron box running Ubuntu AMD64 Linux with VMWare installed).

      --
      It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
    2. Re:What would really be surprising by idiotnot · · Score: 3, Funny

      the beta of sol10 x86 I've been running uses x.org. No problems at all with my Radeon 9k. Accel 2D only.

    3. Re:What would really be surprising by upsidedown_duck · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Solaris had its advantages, but X11 wasn't one of them and CDE wasn't another.

      1) Your Sun workstation had a genuine and complete OpenGL implementation.
      2) Sun provides the configuration for the X server, so you don't have to.
      3) Sun's packages generally update the X server configuration for you, so you don't have to.
      4) XDM for remote logins works out of the box.
      5) Sun's drivers are integration tested with the hardware, so there are few suprises.

      The only detractions I can say about Xsun/CDE are that there are extensions becoming popular in the XFree86/X.org realm that Sun hasn't adopted, yet, and that CDE, while functional, definitely has some flakes. However, I still use CDE, because GNOME still has a long way to go (looking foward to seeing how Solaris 10's GNOME works).

      On the flip side, getting OpenGL working under many PC configurations is a flat out nightmare, and the configurations files are also a nightmare. Linux/X.org are nice, but even a rose has thorns.

      --
      -- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
  6. Need modern workstation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Damn! If I only had a MODERN Sun workstation it might just have been fast enough to get first pos!

    On the subject of workstations though... At a train station, trains stop. At a bus stations, buses stop. What does work do at a workstation?

    1. Re:Need modern workstation by triso · · Score: 2
      On the subject of workstations though... At a train station, trains stop. At a bus stations, buses stop. What does work do at a workstation?
      Your glass is half-empty: trains also start at train stations and buses also start at bus stations.
    2. Re:Need modern workstation by akadruid · · Score: 2, Funny

      Your glass is half-empty: trains also start at train stations and buses also start at bus stations.

      You don't live in the UK then. Trains starting or stopping at stations is considered foolish optomism here.

      Usual behaviour is considered to be failing to arrive, failing to go anywhere, getting halfway and breaking down or just sitting for hours at a time in the middle of nowhere. On a good day. With the right kind of leaves. And the wrong kind of Terrorists.

      --
      "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
  7. For those who don't want to click through... by GillBates0 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Direct link to the Conclusions page

    The results of the SPEC benchmarks (Page 8) look quite impressive, from a cursory look at the graphs (more=better). It seemed to outperform RH9 and SuSE9.1 on most of them.

    Quite an extensive review IMHO.

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
    1. Re:For those who don't want to click through... by Jameth · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah it does good on SPEC (page 8) then proceeds to come in dead last on basically every other benchmark (pages 9 to 13).

      Not so impressive as you are implying (although it is basically silent and damn cool, apparently, so it's not bad either).

  8. Waves hand impatiently in a dismissive fashion by Matey-O · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yes, but how did it stack up in Doom3?

    --
    "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
  9. Typical by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Everyone in the PC world worries about cost as their main consideration. Well, that's only an issue if you have one system, and you pay for that yourself. Real Computers, individuals don't buy them, and believe it or not, price is occasionally not the first and last consideration.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    1. Re:Typical by temojen · · Score: 2, Funny
      Computers, individuals don't buy them, and believe it or not, price is occasionally not the first and last consideration.

      It's the availability of infinitely long tapes.

  10. Here Comes the SUN...again by Eberlin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Are we talking about SUN the hardware company or SUN the Solaris folks? Hey, aren't they the ones that bought out the folks that eventually led to Star Office? Wait, I think they mentioned Java Desktop so is the compile-once-run-anywhere SUN?

    Oh, Java Desktop is Linux with some java-related enhancements? Boy, these guys must really like Linux to be using it. Didn't they buy Cobalt before...and those things used Linux? I'm glad a large company is getting behind Linux in such a big way.

    Wait, now I'm confused...they don't LIKE Linux?

    Anyone know what SUN does for a living? Reminds me of a slacker surfer dude with all these different "money-making" schemes they keep pitching. Diversifying sounds more and more like treading water.

    1. Re:Here Comes the SUN...again by bigjnsa500 · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, Java Desktop IS Linux. Its based on SuSE 8.1. The next release will be based on SuSe 9.1.

      --
      This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
  11. Don't call this a comeback, been here for years by ebooher · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The title is a little interesting to me. The Return of the SUN Workstation. Does this mean to say that the current versions of UltraSPARC and Sun Blade systems shouldn't be considered workstations? What do we (as a /. community) describe workstation as, anyway? Do we mean to say really high end 3D work in CAD/CAM, etc? Is the lowly XP machine I'm forced to use at work a "workstation" because it's where I get work done?

    The new Java Workstation series with the AMD Opteron processor is a pretty neat box. Hit SUN.com and download their PDF's on the machine. One includes a diagram/schematic of the motherboard. The motherboard is the mainboard and daughterboard. The daughterboard happens to house the PCI bus and associated gear as well as the SCSI adapter onboard. I wonder why. Will SUN later introduce a different daughterboard with some other version of expansion upgradability? Maybe with SATA instead of SCSI? Just a way to keep the mainboard more flexible?

    It also needs to be said that this isn't just a dual Opteron machine. There is a single proc version of the motherboard. They are also as full on x86 as you can get. No really out there ROMs or chips that only SUN knows about, because they are rated to run Windows as well.

    So the units will run all x86 OS's without a hitch, they just happen to have some SUN engineering behind them as well as the SUN name. I think the main push for the Opteron was that they have an entry level server built around it. SUN knows that not everybody buys really high end multi $$K machines and that some data centers only need one or two sub $1K servers.

    Is this why SUN is so vocal about their new found friends at Microsoft? Because they knew they would be releasing x86 gear that would be certified for Windows Server products and wanted to make sure the world knew that you didn't have to get your WinBoxes from Dell or HP anymore?

    --
    "Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
  12. Re:Their Xeon trade-in program is still going on t by Jahf · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
  13. Sun may survive this by RealAlaskan · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Sun used to be all about high-quality hardware, where cost took a backseat to reliability. I wonder if they'll be able to keep their reputation for quality and support now that they're competing with HP and Walmart at the low end?

    Another post pointed out that SGI started to self-destruct when they started selling Windows NT boxes. At least Sun is peddling these with Solaris, so they aren't literally going into the Dell/Walmart end of the market.

    --
    See what I've been reading.
    1. Re:Sun may survive this by bhtooefr · · Score: 2, Informative

      Anyone remember Cray?

      Why, yes, I do. They learned that lesson too, and are now using Opterons...

  14. Sounds like a good linux platform by argoff · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Would you be surprised to hear Sun is the lowest cost Tier 1 dual-Opteron provider?

    Yes I would be. Anyhow, sounds like a good reason to get one, format the drive - wipe solaris and install Linux on it to get all the apps. Thanks Sun

    1. Re:Sounds like a good linux platform by ebooher · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nope, no custom firmware. From: http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/w2100z/

      The dual-processor Sun Java Workstation W2100z, first in a new line of AMD Opteron processor-based workstations from Sun, delivers ultimate performance, visualization-class graphics solutions, high I/O throughput, and the ability to deploy large data sets (up to 16 GB in size) across multiple operating systems, including the Solaris OS, Linux, and Windows.
      --
      "Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
    2. Re:Sounds like a good linux platform by 0racle · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is what I used to install Solaris from a Slackware system. The instructions are for Solaris 8 and if I remember there was a little problem, but between this and the script that is on the install CD to setup a Solaris Netboot server, you should have enough documentation to get it running.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
  15. Blech... by Krimsen · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why not get even cheaper!

  16. w2100z. w00t! by micromoog · · Score: 4, Funny

    Every time I see w2100z, my internal 1337-sp34k decoder kicks on. Then I realize it's the actual product name.

  17. Re: The return of the Sun Workstation, With AMD's by OccidentalSlashy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Would you be surprised to hear Sun is the lowest cost Tier 1 dual-Opteron provider?

    Yes I would be surprised, and I don't even know what that is! Wow!

    --
    vicious, untreated political sewage...niche entertainment for the spiritually unattractive...worshipless pap
  18. Dual G5 Comparison? by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wonder how these babies stack up against the dual G5 machines Apple has been offering. Looking at the specs, the Mac looks like a better deal. Upgrading the memory to 4 GB brings the price to $5,249.00, just a bit below the white box alternative Anand proposes for the w2100z (the w2100z itself costing some $8600). Of course, price is only one aspect.

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    1. Re:Dual G5 Comparison? by hawaiian717 · · Score: 2, Informative
      * - Note that while Linux will run on Apple hardware, stuff like Java is not available, and some things don't run properly.

      Gentoo Portage lists both Blackdown (1.3.1-r9) and IBM (1.4.1-r1 and 1.4.2) Java Runtime Environments as being available for PowerPC.

      http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=jre

      --
      End of Line.
  19. Re:Their Xeon trade-in program is still going on t by Jahf · · Score: 3, Informative

    Must have been awhile back ...

    Sun's Xeon servers (V60x and V65x) came out about 15 months ago. The LX50 (a P3 Xeon based server) came out about a year before that.

    Sun's Opteron servers (V20z and V40z) started showing up about 6 months ago.

    Sun doesn't have any Intel based workstations ... the trade-in programs are generally to encourage people to give up their Xeons from other sources :)

    Sun's Opteron workstations (w1100z and w2100z) started showing up a couple months ago.

    Sun also has a low voltage Xeon Blade and an Athlon XP Blade. Based on trends I wouldn't be surprised to see an Opteron Blade if power requirements allow.

    It is pretty obvious that it was so much x86 that Sun was against as it was Intel. When I was in Sun's entry-level server group the decision to use Xeon's was only grudgingly done because the Opterons kept getting pushed out. With a 64-bit CPU from an Intel competitor it looks like Sun is alot more comfortable with the relationship on the low-end. Opterons currently max out at 8 CPUs (I think) which is about the point where Sun's SPARC starts to really shine, so it has a lot of synergy.

    --
    It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
  20. Cheaper than IBM? So what? by BobaFett · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not IBM Sun has to compete against with these boxes. It's Dell. Dell sells the 64-bit workstations with Intel's Opteron clones, even with Linux preloaded, and beats Sun by at least 30%. It's even worse if you configure them with more RAM: Sun is so used to charging outrageous prices for their workstation RAM that they just can't turn on a dime. Dell wants about $1200 for the extra 4G of RAM (to bring the total to 8G), Sun at least twice as much.

    It's good that Sun realized that they have to move to commodity hardware if they want to survive, now we're waiting for them to have an epiphany that commodity hardware sells at commodity prices.

  21. Re:Summary - whitebox + linux as good and $3k chea by codepunk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    actually build 3 opteron boxes and put on the mosix kernel and kick the hell out of any box.

    --


    Got Code?
  22. but who spends US$8700 on a work station? by sean.geek.nz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Realistically, is there a significant market for work stations in that price range? If so, who and why?

    I know there are some pretty intense users of 3D rendering out there. But they are a rather small and specialized market.

    Maybe I'm just jealous, but isn't this a distraction for Sun from the real desktop market?

    Sean

    1. Re:but who spends US$8700 on a work station? by ebooher · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, the tip top of the line is $8700.00, but they start out much cheaper than that.

      w1100z

      Opteron Model 144 (Single)

      1 MB L2 Cache

      Quadro NVS280 Graphics

      512 MB RAM

      80 GB HDD

      GigE

      5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X

      DVD-ROM/CD-RW

      $1,495.00

      Opteron Model 150 (Single)

      1 MB L2 Cache

      Quadro FX500 Graphics

      1 GB RAM

      80 GB HDD

      GigE

      5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X

      DVD-ROM/CD-RW

      $2,095.00

      w2100z

      Opteron Model 246 (Dual)

      1 MB L2 Cache

      Quadro NVS280 Graphics

      2 GB RAM

      73 GB HDD (SCSI)

      GigE

      5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X

      DVD-ROM/CD-RW

      $4,695.00

      Opteron Model 250 (Dual)

      1 MB L2 Cache

      Quadro FX3000 Graphics

      4 GB RAM

      73 GB HDD (SCSI)

      GigE

      5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X

      DVD-ROM/CD-RW

      $8,695.00

      --
      "Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
  23. Remember the 386i, Suns first flirtation with x86? by G4from128k · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This machine isn't Sun's first x86 machine. The 386i was an early attempt by Sun to use a cheap Intel processor to make a lower-price Unix machine. All of this was before Sun abandoned 3rd-party processors (Motorola and Intel) to concentrate on the SPARC architecture.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  24. Re:w2100z. w00t! by Bitmanhome · · Score: 2, Funny

    WE LOOZ? Very ominous.

    --
    Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
  25. A bit of Mac whoring from a price perspective... by ikewillis · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Even in the enterprise and scientific community cost is still a consideration. I come from a scientific computing group that used to pay $20,000 for dual UltraSPARC-III Sun Blade workstations, then moved to Linux clusters, and is now moving to Apple clusters and Apple workstations. After being given a large discount by Apple, we found Apple's offer of cluster of 20 dual 2.0GHz G5 Xserves to be more powerful (and certainly less problematic) than Dell's offer of 20 3.2GHz Nocona Xeons. We found the new Intel Fortran Compiler 8.1 with EM64T support to be rather underwelming... its binaries optimized for the 64-bit Nocona Xeons with SSE3 couldn't outperform those made by Pathscale, the leading AMD64 compiler suite, on Intel's own processors (even though Pathscale only supports SSE2). However, neither could outperform IBM XL Fortran on the Xserve's 2.0GHz IBM PPC970FX processors with AltiVec units.

    At less than an eighth of the price of a Sun workstation, you can purchase a dual 2.5GHz G5, which lacks many of the amenities of Sun Blades such as ECC RAM and 10,000RPM FC-AL hard drives, the model runs considerably faster at a fraction of the price, and the system can double as a user desktop with both Unix (i.e. scientific computing programs) and (otherwise) Windows amenities such as Microsoft Office and Adobe tools (Photoshop/Illustrator/Acrobat).

    For any role I can imagine for a dual Opteron workstation, I can see a G5 in the same role for a considerably cheaper price. Furthermore, I can see a G5 outperforming an Opteron in any of those roles, because in virtually all of them (scientific computing, medical computing, multimedia/3D modelling/video production) the AltiVec unit on the G5 will be extremely beneficial, whereas Opteron has no good vector units for these purposes (Opteron SSE2 is slower than its FPU, SSE is only 64-bits, doesn't support double precision floating point or the multitude of operations AltiVec supports such as trig functions needed for FFT/DCT transforms)

    I believe that next to the new Nocona Xeon-based Dell Precision workstations (with SSE3 which is comparable to AltiVec), Apple has the cheapest and most powerful Tier 1 workstation offering in the form of the dual 2.5GHz G5, at least for the roles a high end dual processor 64-bit workstation is intended to serve.

  26. Re:Death of an Open Source CPU by Jahf · · Score: 2, Informative

    Show me an Open Source hardware platform that can be aquired for equal to or less than the cost of a commodity hardware platform with even 1/2 the performance.

    The reason open source software succeeds so well is because of the low cost of entry as developer and the fact that the quality of open source software can match the quality of proprietary software. The case is not the same for hardware. You don't need a manufacturing facility or a the equivalent of an EE degree to get into engineering software, you only need a low cost PC or even access to a university lab.

    A large part of the idea behind open source software is to commoditize the market so that everyone can afford to run high quality software. That goal has already been achieved in the hardware market (not saying that a $5,000 workstation counts there, but the fact that I can buy a -very- capable PC for $400 and the kind of performance that used to cost $50,000 maybe 5 years ago is now in the $5,000 range).

    Another big factor in open source software is annoyance at companies like Microsoft and Bell that had traditionally kept people from knowing how to manipulate the proprietary software. CPU manufacturers like AMD and Intel have gone to great pains to make sure that the open source community had full access to the CPU architectures on the Opteron and the Itanium before it so that they ran Linux well.

    Sure, there are things like 3D cards that are a big thorn in the side of open source coding, but you don't seem to be talking about them so much as CPU and chipset as a platform.

    --
    It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
  27. Re:A bit of Mac whoring from a price perspective.. by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 2, Insightful

    At less than an eighth of the price of a Sun workstation, you can purchase a dual 2.5GHz G5

    $8,695.00 for this dual Opteron Sun w2100z. Please, point me to this amazing deal that gives you dual 2.5GHz G5's for about $1000. And with comparable specs would be nice - like 4G ECC RAM, Quadro-class video and so on.

    For any role I can imagine for a dual Opteron workstation, I can see a G5 in the same role for a considerably cheaper price.

    Yeah, you're trolling, I know. But here's a question: do you know what the (listed for the Sun w2100z) GeForce Quadro FX3000 is used for? Did you ever see a G5-powered station used for the same purpose? (hint: look at the video cards Apple puts in the top-of-the-line G5)

    Opteron SSE2 is slower than its FPU, SSE is only 64-bits, doesn't support double precision floating point ...

    Dude, lay off the crack! Really, now, why do I even bother? You obviously think x86 is still back in the PentiumPro era or something like that. Get your 'facts' straight.

    The sad thing is, you could have actually made a point here. AltiVec is definitely better implemented than SSE2/3 ... if only AMD would wake up to doing to SIMD the same parallelization they pulled with FPU on Athlons! I have little hope in Intel for that, as they have Itanium in mind as the FPU racehorse.