Slashdot Mirror
Sun's CIO Talks Internal Experiences
daria42 writes "This is an interesting interview with Sun's chief information officer Bill Vass, about his experiences as the CIO of one of the world's best-known high-tech company. In particular, Vass talks about corporate blogging (and frustrated lawyers), problems providing IT support to finicky Sun engineers (who sometimes demand Indian help desk support knows kernel details), Sun's programs testing its software internally on employees before it goes out, and how ultimately, his job is like any other CIO's...just with some cool toys."
For example, he said Sun president Jonathan Schwartz -- who keeps a public blog -- was frustrated when April Fool's day came around, because he couldn't use his blog to play a practical joke.
... if ever he's writing anything controversial he has to get the lawyers to look at it."
"A few times, he's said things like 'maybe we should acquire Novell', and it changed the stock price," Vass said of Schwartz's blog. "You have to be careful
Sun is buying Novell? Ack! I need to go call my stock broker!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Go, Roller! :)
Although Vass had no knowledge of this, he soon discovered the system in question was in fact the desktop machine of an engineer who had recently left the company. The desktop had been reformatted following his departure, cutting off 600 users who had over the last three years depended on it for network services.
Reminds me of a guy whose leaving our company right now. We're probably not going to delete his homespace since lord knows what will break if the things in there are gone.
It'll take us awhile to get that stuff into a common place. Probably took Sun a lot of time to get that one system back up and running.
-Teiresias
I do NOT envy the job of CIO. Those guys have a tough row to hoe. BTW, if you ever want to know how the industry is being perceived by business, CIO magazine is a great read.(but expensive) It's real eye-opener to hear things from the other side of the tracks.
Moore's Law: Not the Only Game in Town
They've got a lot of nerve actually expecting outsourced help desk services to be of any use! Who the hell do these "engineers" think they are?
If these guys actually knew how to help, they'd cost more. Duh. Think of the bottom line, people!
I mean, c'mon... this can't be the first pure virtual function you've ever come across.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
>However, some unusual problems did surface sometimes, he said, citing the example of a Solaris engineer who contacted Sun's IT help desk in India and subsequently sent Vass a note complaining the help desk member who assisted him didn't know intricate kernel settings for the operating system he needed help on.
Can you imagine that call, "I am so happy to be helping you, however, I am sorry to be informing you that... pause...I am not being the Dammed premier kernel support line! " SLAM!
lol
Mommy I want to be CIO and I want toys too ...
What does your Credit Report look like?
I would be angry too if I called up technical support and I couldn't get kernel level knowlege. Most administrators know or at least use to know enough about the platform they are admistering to handle most of the problems and then for other things the search the web and blogs, for more help. If this fails them they have a good question for technical support. And having to go threw level 1 then 2 then 3 technical support is just annoying, and a waist of time. Technical support should be able to quicly figure out the complexity of your problem and move you to the aproprate level. If I am adding a user the person who answers the phone should give me to level 1, but if I am configuring the system kernel options then I should be placed on a higher level support.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
give him a break, he's just a CIO
"problems providing IT support to finicky Sun engineers (who sometimes demand Indian help desk support knows kernel details)"
Engineers making outlandish requests is as common as Microsoft making buggy products. Good enginners and famous rock stars both need to be a little weird to be succesful.
Voice your opinion!
I, for one, welcome our new Indian poor grammar kernel hacker overloards...
Its Eleven where I am, so heres the FILM.
s _1.wmv
:), its good for a few laughs.
http://www.candlelightdreams.com/videos/funny_cat
Just found this, free(as in freedom) and open ( as in red light district) no DRM
and now he has to Herd them in Hindi.
These guys messed up on that one for sure. Actually it ran for some time about a year before this happened.
When you are CIO of a technical company it is tempting be lax with policy and give the employees more access then they should have, it seems like a decent policy, first you save money because the desktops that people use anyways are also the servers so you don't need expensive servers, the technical people can administer their own system, and whatever they are serving.
But being a CIO you need to be a Dick every once in a while and make sure the technical people have the only the access they need to do their work properly. Have the IT department put buisness level servers in the server room and have them properly managed.
While the first way seems quicker and easier and has less personal conflect. The second way is better to manage and reduces of mission critical mistakes. It also allows for proper upgrading for the future.
Sure the employess can do the work themselvs but they rairly consider the big picture and end up with a spread of services which are hard to track and manage. It also creates a situration where an employee cannot be moved to a different position because they have the information that others dont.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Will someone please think of those poor, suffering lawyers, dreading all this "open" commnication?[/sarcasm]
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
Although Vass had no knowledge of this, he soon discovered the system in question was in fact the desktop machine of an engineer who had recently left the company. The desktop had been reformatted following his departure, cutting off 600 users who had over the last three years depended on it for network services.
"The network is the computer" and it bites Sun in the ass.
His blog is empty.
This is one reason why Sun has one of the best IT infrastructures around. It was designed by actual Engineers, who were building the protocols as they built up the infrastructure.
The same problem applies to lots of what I call "phony" Linux kernel experts these days (the self-proclaimed ones, not the real ones). These clowns are sprouting out of the woodwork, and typically the most they've ever done is type "make", or maybe a device driver. They can't admin a Linux desktop at all. And usually they rely on Windows for their desktop. It's a farce that they call themselves "kernel experts"; but their PHB usually doesn't have the knowledge to recognize that they have a pretender on their hands.
So I find it sad that so-called Sun Engineers are having to rely on help-desk support for basic administration. Any real Engineer should be able to get the problem solved faster and more reliably themselves.
He is just a Jupiter executer. Can't understand why so important.
1)Lowering the price on their machines by 40%. Clearly this is the death rattle. A company operating at a loss is a company which won't be operating for very long.
Sheesh! First Sun is criticised for producting overpriced machines, then criticised for cutting the prices!
2)Sleeping with microsoft.
Er. There was legal action against Microsoft by Sun. Sun won, because Microsoft settled. Part of the deal was that Sun got access to some Microsoft technologies. It's not sleeping with Microsoft - it is beating them.
Yet, if you look at the fsf web page, you can easily see that 'cuddle' (the sun license; god knows why the came up with yet another one) is as far from free software as you can get!
First Sun are criticised for being closed source, then they are criticised when they open source (OSI approved) major software items.
SUN's days are numbered. Time to cash in your stock and cut your losses.
Ah, the regular Slashdot 'SUN is dead' proclamation. The one we have been reading for years. It is now so cliched it is a joke.
you gotta change a loosing game so I expect them to try things out. But nothing they'e tried has panned out yet. They got a lot of mind share with Java but did they get any cash?
My SUNW has been so low for so long I half expected to hear the company has put one-digit stock tickers on every executive's desk.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
They're finally starting to tinker with #1. The new Ultra 20 (based on the AMD Opteron 64 chipset) lists at $895. This is *unheard* of for Sun, particularly that the SunBlade 1500 still goes for up to $3500.
The current promotion is that the workstation if FREE as long as you buy three years of Sun service for ~$1,000, but is only a bit more than the workstation itself. The catch: annual payments instead of the advertised $29.95 per month. Sadly, the annual payments crap (roughly $400 per year for three years) was enough to kill it for me. If they implemented the advertised $29.95 per month, three of us in my department would have ordered one by now.
Even with the annual payment hurdle, for Sun to offer a workstation that actually has quite respectable horsepower under the hood for less than $1,000 is completely unheard of. Maybe they're testing the waters for further pricing structures in the future? One can only hope.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I need to clarify I think that price cuts are a good thing for Sun. I didn't realize with my first reply that you were actually criticizing Sun for cutting prices. How cutting prices is a death knell is beyond me.
The FACT is that Sun's hardware has been way OVERPRICED for almost a decade! That's exactly why I personally have seen a number of major, international, engineering firms go from Sun workstations to Dell workstations. The Dell systems were twice and fast at half the cost and the CAD/CAM product that they used was available on both platforms. So, switching to Dell was a no brainer!
The fact that Sun is starting to cut their prices tells me that they finally understand that they can no longer ride the high-price wave just because of the Sun name.
So, you tell me what's worse - selling less hardware at a higher profit margin because it's cost prohibitive, or selling more hardware at a lower cost and lower profit margin? Personally, I'd rather get anything that I sell to more people at a lower profit. It gets a larger installed base; it means that many more people that might upgrade in the future; it means even more potential sales for licensing; it means more people that might spread positive word-of mouth. There are many more benefits that I can see to selling more items at a lower cost than fewer at a higher cost. They might not be realized in the here and now, but they could bring in much better returns in the long run.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Here's how escalation works...
1. Customer calls tech suppport(level 1)
2. Level 1 can't fix it. Fills out an escalation form to level 2. The unseen beings of level 2 are supposed to call back. A "trouble ticket" is made to great detail by level 1 tech, apologizes to customer.
3. Time passes by
4. The unseen overlords of level 2(or escalation department) forget about the trouble ticket, hoping the customer and level 1 forget about the trouble ticket
5. level 1 prays customer never calls back, since he/she heard nothing from level 2 about it, and never will.
That's at least what happened when I did tech support for an ISP. I think I later checked on the customers with escalations, and they, well, weren't customers anymore.
Wow. That was fluff. I want my 30 seconds back.
st found this, free(as in freedom) and open ( as in red light district) no DRM :), its good for a few laughs.
really? Then why is there a copyright symbol when you play the video back......
I am sure this was some lame ass attempt by some engineer who couldn't figure out why he could not open 18000 file descriptors or why his "malloc 2^64" was failing, and thought changing the kernel time slice parameters to reduce context switches would help.
The poor guy in India probably had a Master's Degree in Solaris Kernel Tuning and pissed off the engineer by telling him he was an idiot.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Guess they should have put the 30 second FBI warning and RIAA warning on the front of it.
I missed the copyright.
We do not know if it is being reproduced with or without permission now do we?
You let me know how it turns out, thanks!
I wouldn't really call that an interview. Looked more like a story with some quotes to me.
Thank you for shooting down yet another idiot slashdotter.
You're talking like P4's and Sparcs are comparable by speed. I've seen way "slower" sparcs kick the crap out of P4's in benchmarks. While Sun's equiptment is certainly high in the price range, your "Twice as much for half the cost" thing is complete and utter BS.
:( ).
Suffice it to say, I'm really liking the Sun Opteron offerings, because now one can actually vaguely compare the systems with, say, Dell or HP's, without running your own benchmarks on them (don't you love how companies only publish the particular benchmarks that their system performs best on *cough* IBM *cough*).
I myself think (hope) Sun will be around for the long run, and won't join those other awesome companies (i.e. DEC) that due to an outdated business model, fade away.
( I miss DEC
Its stuff like this that have finally forced me to cash out my very sizeable stake in SUNW at a considerable loss. There is simply no hope that it would ever be recovered in the next 20 year and I've just run out of patience to any longer suffer fools so gladly. Yes, they may have some awesome technology and minds working for them. Its just they don't seem to know how to use it to their shareholder's advantage.
These guys remind me a lot of the Bush administration. They have all sorts of quotable views, are great at hype, and are extremely rich in excuses. The problem comes in showing evidence of any real progress.
But what the hell. Who needs credibility nowadays? The masses are ready to settle for a virtual reality rather than the real thing.
>However, some unusual problems did surface sometimes, he said, citing the example of a Solaris engineer who contacted Sun's IT help desk in India and subsequently sent Vass a note complaining the help desk member who assisted him didn't know intricate kernel settings for the operating system he needed help on.
well, if a solaris engineer doesn't know anything about the kernel, what can we say about the product..Sun needs a lot of good luck..oh wait..I forgot Microsoft!!
- Sh!t
You're talking like P4's and Sparcs are comparable by speed. I've seen way "slower" sparcs kick the crap out of P4's in benchmarks. While Sun's equiptment is certainly high in the price range, your "Twice as much for half the cost" thing is complete and utter BS.
You go on thinking that.
They did not make the decision lightly. One company in particular ran several 2D and 3D rendering tests using designs of various complexities with different metalurgical and thermal dynamics. The top-of-the-line Dells whipped the sh!t out of the top-of-the-line Suns by a margin of approximately three to one.
That's not to say that the program itself was not at fault. It could have been improperly compiled on the Sun systems for (as an example) 32 bit when it should have been 64 bit. That's not Sun's fault, obviously. But the end result is what the company saw when they ran their tests. And they saw Dell systems producing results at 1/2 to 1/3 the time of Sun systems that cost twice as much. They're not going to pay twice as much for 1/2 the speed just because the software vendor didn't compile the product properly.
So, no, it's not utter BS just because you (and I) would like it to be.
(don't you love how companies only publish the particular benchmarks that their system performs best on *cough* IBM *cough*)
I can only take this with a grain of salt, but supposedly some of IBM's software specs, such as for DB/2 performance, are specs as they were run on Sun systems because they were faster than AIX. Again, grain of salt.
But never take marketers seriously. I remember one time becoming furious at either HP or Dell because they said that people should buy their systems instead of Sun based on (get this) OpenGL performance! Uh, excuse me? I want to run a smokin' database or e-commerce web site, and I'm supposed to buy HP (or Dell, whichever it was) because of OpenGL performance! Whoa....
I myself think (hope) Sun will be around for the long run, and won't join those other awesome companies (i.e. DEC) that due to an outdated business model, fade away.
Agreed.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Had a chance to meet Mr. Vass at the 2005 TechSouth Expo where he gave a keynote. Cool guy, good demonstration of Sun Rays and their mobile desktop technology. Being able to insert a smart card and pull up his SunOS and/or Windows XP desktop in Lafayette, LA from their corporate HQ in a matter of seconds was pretty cool. He also took the opportunity to send some barbs towards Cox and Bellsouth over the proposed Fiber-to-the-Home initiative ("Stuff like this is why it's so great you guys are getting fiber run in this city!"). So that definitely won him some points in our book. ;)
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Sheesh! First Sun is criticised for producting overpriced machines, then criticised for cutting the prices!
Actually, this sums up the problems at Sun very nicely.
They can't sell their high end machines for the prices they used to charge in the 90s because of a number of factors - Cheap linux clusters, high performance PC workstations, strong IBM and HP enterprise competition etc...
On the other hand, they can't go with cheap computers because they don't have the economy of scale to make that profitable. Also they need to invest in OS R&D, Microprocessor R&D, Systems R&D etc... Whereas a company like Dell has 0 R&D and just slaps a system together with screwdrivers and gets extremely low pricing from component vendors like Intel.
In short - their business model is broken. I have no idea how they can fix it. They will become increasingly irrelevant and die a long slow death due - like SGI.
Just in case you've been wondering all these years why dutch people keep sniggering at you. It's because your nick translates as 'Jeff The Virgin'. If you ever come over you might want introduce yourself as just Jeff.
Cheerio!
2B || !2B
CIO magazine is indeed a good read. It's not expensive, though. It's free. Soul-sucking registration is required.
In short - their business model is broken. I have no idea how they can fix it. They will become increasingly irrelevant and die a long slow death due - like SGI.
There would be a problem if their business model depended primarily on selling computer systems. It doesn't. Like IBM, Sun has been changing the focus of their company and now have a significant and increasing proportion of their income from software sales, licensing and consultancy services.
Sun have never been irrelevant; on the contrary they are having a significant effect on the IT industry. For example, Java may not be wildly popular amongst slashdotters, but it is extremely widely used for everything from business applictations, real-time systems and mobile devices. There are now many more installations which use Sun-designed software than use Microsoft! In no way can this be called 'irrelevant'.
They got a lot of mind share with Java but did they get any cash?
Yes, they did. Java is the foundation for much of the software and services that they sell and license, and this forms an increasing part of their income. Selling hardware (the 'losing game', as you call it) is a decreasing proportion of their business.
Irrelevant in the "makes money" sense of the word. The C language has a huge and lasting impact on the computing world, but nobody cares that it was invented at AT&T.
I like to buy stocks on the cheap, so I have been investigating Sun as a potential investment opportunity. Sometimes the market overly discounts bad news. In the case of Sun, it doesn't look good. I wouldn't put my hard earned money into the stock.
Here is a direct quote from their latest 10Q SEC filing:
Our Products net revenue was unfavorably impacted by competition and a continuing market shift in overall computer system demand away from our data center servers towards the usage of enterprise and entry level servers
and...
services revenue consists primarily of maintenance contract revenue, which is recognized ratably over the contractual period
Hmm...maintenance contracts that will run out once the customers move away to cheaper/more-capable hardware solutions from IBM/Dell and the likes. So, contrary to your assertation, service revenue is hugely dependent on your hardware lineup.
The outlook is pretty grim... Ultimately, you need a tangible hardware product to sell in order to add the lucrative services to later on. Sun just doesn't have anything that compelling to offer in their product pipeline.
Irrelevant in the "makes money" sense of the word. The C language has a huge and lasting impact on the computing world, but nobody cares that it was invented at AT&T.
It is not irrelevant at all. The situation would be comparable only if AT&T licensed some implementations of C (as with J2EE and J2ME) and had a considerable business selling C-based products (such as their Enterprise systems).
Our Products net revenue was unfavorably impacted by competition and a continuing market shift in overall computer system demand away from our data center servers towards the usage of enterprise and entry level servers
Yes, which is why they are moving towards services and software.
Hmm...maintenance contracts that will run out once the customers move away to cheaper/more-capable hardware solutions from IBM/Dell and the likes. So, contrary to your assertation, service revenue is hugely dependent on your hardware lineup.
It certainly is dependent to some extent, but if you look at the details of these services and contracts on their reports you will see that they mention both hardware and software. This is a significant change on what they were doing years ago.
The continual 'it doesn't look good' reports don't seem to have any relevance to Sun's real prospects. If nothing else, they have billions of funds that could have kept them going for the best part of a decade, even when they were making a loss. They are now roughly back in profit. By no standards is this 'grim'.
Sun will certainly change, and perhaps in ways that the stock market does not like. However, they have always been changing, and I have little doubt that they will be around in some form for a long while to come.
It certainly is dependent to some extent, but if you look at the details of these services and contracts on their reports you will see that they mention both hardware and software. This is a significant change on what they were doing years ago.
I would also like to see Sun move away from the hardware business and start to focus on software. Solaris is solid and java is good for the enterprise. Sun's strength is in software and systems engineering. I'd like to see them push standardization of commodity hardware up the enterprise stack. Let them spec out the enterprise systems that Dell can go off and build. McNealy...You DO NOT want to compete with Dell. You DO NOT want to compete with Intel (kill SPARC already).
If they can get their software stack to run on this commodity hardware, then they have a survivable future. They can become the "Microsoft" of the server world. Cleary they can differentiate themselves from Linux and Microsoft with better features in Solaris that are more suited towards the enterprise. Otherwise, I just see Linux based systems becoming more and more capable as IBM continues to add more enterprise features year after year.
Sun management seems clueless. Witness the latest aquisition of a storage company. They still want to sell hardware? They still pour billions into SPARC development? Why? Intel and AMD do a perfectly good job of making fast scalable processors. It's just that nobody builds systems that take advantage of that yet. Here's your chance Sun...
McNealy has to go... This isn't 1999 anymore.
If they can get their software stack to run on this commodity hardware, then they have a survivable future.
... premature. The only people who are in a position to judge this in reality are the management themselves, because they are in possession of the facts. Still, I guess, we are all free to state our opinions.
I believe that is exactly what they have been doing with Java, and now it is getting that way with Solaris.
Sun management seems clueless.
I often hear this, and to me it seems a little
Witness the latest aquisition of a storage company. They still want to sell hardware? They still pour billions into SPARC development? Why? Intel and AMD do a perfectly good job of making fast scalable processors.
My impression is that these are pretty good ways forward. There is about to be a phenomenal demand for storage because of the growth of networked multimedia and because of new regulations in the USA and elsewhere for businesses to keep all information about everything. Storage and archiving are going to be big, and if you can get a complete systems integrated with your servers from one source, this is a real advantage.
As for the processors, these tend to leap-frog each other in cycles. Intel and AMD are fast now, but they have hit a problem in terms of heat and are moving to multi-core. The new SPARC is going to be way ahead terms of performance. Intel and AMD are talking about dual-core. The new SPARC will have 8 cores, each capable of running 4 threads. The open-sourcing of Solaris, and running it non-SPARC was a great idea. It means that developers can use Solaris for free, and then easily migrate to very fast SPARC-based systems when demand requires this.
I often hear this, and to me it seems a little ... premature. The only people who are in a position to judge this in reality are the management themselves
You mean like Ed Zander, who is a great manager, who left to go to Motorola? There's a pretty handy metric by which you can measure the performance of management. It's the stock price. I think that speaks for itself.
My impression is that these are pretty good ways forward. There is about to be a phenomenal demand for storage because of the growth of networked multimedia and because of new regulations in the USA and elsewhere for businesses to keep all information about everything. Storage and archiving are going to be big, and if you can get a complete systems integrated with your servers from one source, this is a real advantage.
But they want to compete with EMC which uses Dell for distribution? Hmm, good luck with that!
As for the processors, these tend to leap-frog each other in cycles. Intel and AMD are fast now, but they have hit a problem in terms of heat and are moving to multi-core. The new SPARC is going to be way ahead terms of performance
The point of ditching SPARC is to reduce costs. If they leap-frog each other (which is a dubious assumption - SPARC has been way behind for a while, which is why they completely lost the workstation market to Dell), that would suggest that Intel/AMD are doing just fine bringing capable processors to market. What exactly is the competitive advantage of using SPARC that would justify its enormous investment? At some point investors want to see a return on that investment. They've been waiting a while... Ultrasparc V was cancelled. Sun has never built an out-of-order processor. Niagra is late. Furthermore, Niagra = Cell so it's not exactly a special Sun-only technology.
My main point is this. Sun delivers mediocre hardware, but they can't even deliver that at a price the market wants because competitors offer solutions that are far cheaper and still get the job done. The management strategy seems to be this: Let's compete with Linux, EMC, Dell, IBM and Intel all at once! This is madness - you can't be good at everything. Vertically integrated computer companies are going the way of the dodo. Pick some key areas where you have a competitive advantage (Like software and systems) and focus there while outsourcing the rest. Your costs will come down and you can differentiate yourself from the competition. What's next? Is Sun going to fab their own custom DRAM? Does management even know why their computers are expensive relative to the competition?
open-sourcing of Solaris, and running it non-SPARC was a great idea. It means that developers can use Solaris for free, and then easily migrate to very fast SPARC-based systems when demand requires this.
Fast SPARC is an oxymoron. I'll believe it when I see it.
It's the stock price. I think that speaks for itself.
No it doesn't. The wall street opinion of a company has a pretty limited perspective.
What exactly is the competitive advantage of using SPARC that would justify its enormous investment?
It's scalability at the high end, especially for things like networking performance.
At some point investors want to see a return on that investment. They've been waiting a while... Ultrasparc V was cancelled. Sun has never built an out-of-order processor. Niagra is late.
This happens - there is nothing new about late processors.
Furthermore, Niagra = Cell so it's not exactly a special Sun-only technology.
How is this relevant?
My main point is this. Sun delivers mediocre hardware,
Oh, I really disagree with this! The processor may not be the fastest yet, but the general hardware is great.
but they can't even deliver that at a price the market wants because competitors offer solutions that are far cheaper and still get the job done.
They are still selling the stuff!
The management strategy seems to be this: Let's compete with Linux, EMC, Dell, IBM and Intel all at once!
No - it is about competing with those in the areas where those are weak: Linux in terms of high-scalability, Dell in terms of high-performance servers, Intel in terms of core performance and high-end-scalability.
Fast SPARC is an oxymoron. I'll believe it when I see it.
This is wildly simplistic. SPARC had a real performance advantage a few years ago. I'd be interested in how a 8-core processor running at high GHz is going to be slower than 2-core processors at the same speed.
Sun are changing, and some of the markets you mention are shrinking, but it would be a sad day if everything was stock-market driven and large sections of a company that included huge amounts of expertise and IP were dumped just to please short-term interests of investors.
No it doesn't. The wall street opinion of a company has a pretty limited perspective.
The shareholders are the OWNERS of the company. It is McNealy's JOB to increase shareholder value. He has no other function. Therefore, he (management) has failed miserably. That's the metric that is used in corporate America, Europe, Japan etc... Because the stock price has not gone up - investors are skeptical of Sun's future. Do you have your hard earned money in SUNW? The board of directors, which represent the shareholder interests, could have him fired.
It's scalability at the high end, especially for things like networking performance.
So you believe that the benefit of networking performance justifies the cost (several billions) of SPARC? I'm confused - how exactly does SPARC excel at "networking performance"? I thought that was a "system" thing, not a "processor" thing. You can buy TCP/IP offload engine chips for far cheaper than funding a 600 person engineering team for several years.
This happens - there is nothing new about late processors.
Why have late processors at all when there are perfectly good ones available from Intel/AMD?
Furthermore, Niagra = Cell so it's not exactly a special Sun-only technology.
How is this relevant?
You were saying that the performance of 8 cores (in-order) with 4 threads per core was going to be a competitive advantage for Sun. I am saying that IBM already has similar technology with CELL which it is already ramping in volume. Again - Sun's processor development is late and redundant.
They are still selling the stuff!
But for how long? Their cost structure is totally out of whack with the industry. They're getting priced into oblivion for the reasons I've been trying to state. Sun needs to cut cut cut - to save costs and focus on things that they are strong at.
No - it is about competing with those in the areas where those are weak: Linux in terms of high-scalability, Dell in terms of high-performance servers, Intel in terms of core performance and high-end-scalability.
They can compete with Linux in terms of scalability. They cannot compete with Dell on the low end - too much pricing pressure. They cannot compete with IBM on the high end - their hardware isn't competitive enough. They certainly cannot compete with Intel in processor design - they've been behind for about 8 years now. They've cancelled their giant UltraSPARC-V effort. Intel/AMD have scalable processors, it's just that nobody has built systems to take advantage of that yet. Again - what exactly is their strategy?
I'd be interested in how a 8-core processor running at high GHz is going to be slower than 2-core processors at the same speed.
Niagra is 1.4GHz. The competition is twice that. Niagra is using SINGLE-SCALAR IN-ORDER processors. I'm guessing you're not a processor designer (I am), but this is a huge performance disadvantage. How else are you going to pack 8 processors onto a die of that size? - they needed to make them simple and slow. You get a 2x performance from superscalar/out-of-order, and another 2x from frequency. That's 4x per core. So 8/4 = 2 which is dual core. IE - they have equivalent throughput to current dual core offerings.
Sun are changing, and some of the markets you mention are shrinking, but it would be a sad day if everything was stock-market driven and large sections of a company that included huge amounts of expertise and IP were dumped just to please short-term interests of investors.
If the IP is dumped then it had no value. Ultimately, the only reason someone is going to give you money to build a computer is to see a positive return on that money. My belief is that Sun does have valuable IP - but it's not in processors. It's in the software.
The shareholders are the OWNERS of the company. It is McNealy's JOB to increase shareholder value. He has no other function. Therefore, he (management) has failed miserably.
What I was saying was that Wall Street has a limited perspective in terms of time, not in terms of what a company does. Simply keeping a company going through the dot-com crash was a success. Microsoft's stock has been stagnant for years, but few call them a failure.
You were saying that the performance of 8 cores (in-order) with 4 threads per core was going to be a competitive advantage for Sun. I am saying that IBM already has similar technology with CELL which it is already ramping in volume. Again - Sun's processor development is late and redundant.
Yes - a competitive advantage against Intel and AMD.
IE - they have equivalent throughput to current dual core offerings.
I would say it depends what you are using them for. I am not a chip designer (I only have experience in electronics and circuit design), but I do understand the principles and it looks like Niagra is tuned for high volume multi-threaded network use, with features like a crypto processor for each core and very high-bandwith memory interface. I suspect that for this sort of server use you will get huge benefits over designs that require more processors.