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4-Way Sun Fire V40z Reviewed

Posted by samzenpus on from the compile-faster dept.

Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech has a pretty thorough analysis of Sun's V40z 4-way Opteron server that fits in a 3U. Among some of the more noteable benchmarks include a 2 minute, 30 second Linux 2.6.4 kernel compile! Who would have thought only a few years ago that Sun would be the new champion of Linux and AMD?"

5 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Who says they are? by IANAAC · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Who would have thought only a few years ago that Sun would be the new champion of Linux and AMD?"
    They're doing what they have to do to survive.

    If they had their way, it'd be Solaris/Sparc all the way.

    1. Re:Who says they are? by saleenS281 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      you confused "survive" with "grow and maximize profit". As if Sun is going anywhere anytime soon. They're going to die just like novell, BSD, and Microsoft are.
      Sun realizes that the opteron provides nearly the performance of their sparc at a cheaper price... why not bundle it up and make MORE money since the cream of the crop for them is service. And more systems sold==more people buying service contracts. And lord knows cheaper prices==more systems sold.

  2. Re:I suspected by DesScorp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sparc isn't dead...Sun just realized that they can't keep up with Intel and IBM in the chip wars by themselves. They've teamed up with a Japanese company (Fujitsu?) for future Sparc development. Sparc will be for high-end customers only. They're positioning Opteron for the cheap end.

    --
    Life is hard, and the world is cruel
  3. Re:I smell ... by otis+wildflower · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hell, what server admin runs Linux, the lowest common denominator of Unix and Unix-workalies, on a real server?

    Take a trip to NYC, walk out of the Wall St. 4/5 station, pick a tall building, go up on the roof, unzip your fly, and take a piss. Inside the building you hit you will find a company that transacts hundreds of thousands of dollars of business per MINUTE.

    On Linux.

    Better be quick though, as there's TONS of jobs moving across the Hudson :/

  4. Re:I suspected by vrai · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Can you fit more than eight Opterons in a single machine? Can the CPUs be hot swapped? Do they have the proven uptime record of UltraSparcs?

    If the answer to any of these questions is 'No' then I forsee a continued market for Sparc hardware. Banks spend millions on new Sparc kit every year - for both new and legacy applications. Contrary to popular Slashdot belief, not every task is suitable for clustering. The bandwidth between nodes is still far too small, and the network induced lag far too great.

    When you can get five-nines uptime out of a thirty processor Opteron box - then it'll be time to retire the Sparc range. Until that day comes they'll always have a market.