Slashdot Mirror


Sun Unveils 64-bit Server Line

SumDog is one of many to let us know, PC World is reporting that Sun is expected to reveal the first few of their new 64-bit servers at their quarterly product rollout. From the article: "Formerly code-named Galaxy, the Sun Fire X2100, X4100, and X4200 servers represent the company's bid to woo customers, particularly the financial industry sector, away from rival server vendors Hewlett-Packard and Dell."

3 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Suns have been 64 bit for a while now... by allanc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The UltraSPARC chips have been 64 bit for quite a while now. A more useful article summary would have pointed out the actual newsworthy bit of this story, which is that they're rolling out 64 bit x86 servers (running AMD Opterons).

    1. Re:Suns have been 64 bit for a while now... by mrbooze · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't understand. Solaris is great, but Sun should have abandoned decades of work on their own engineered kernel and ported to Linux just because Linux is cool?

      Why would the company with "the best *nix thing going out there" abandon that just to jump on the linux bandwagon?

      It sounds like you're saying you wish they had done that so that they could contribute "scalability and other enhancements" to the linux kernel for the public, but what would that gain them? Hell, what if that alleged better scalability is based on the fundemental design of the kernel? Suns engineers may not be able to just write some "scalability modules" and plop them into Linux.

      And if in fact their own kernel was already better than linux's kernel in that regard, again why would they want to abandon their own kernel? Just to say "Hey, look everyone, LINUX! LINUX! SQUAWK!"

      None of this is a slam against linux, which is part of a perfectly fine OS as well. I just don't buy into the argument that linux is the ultimate end result of all OS evolution. Just because linux is good doesn't mean it's what everyone else has to be. Sometimes, different is even better than good.

  2. No, no, no, no. by Karma_fucker_sucker · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "We weren't paying attention, we got distracted by all these people with pierced body parts and blue hair," he said. "We missed changes in the marketplace. It's very distracting to grow at 60 percent per quarter and very humbling to have it disappear. We're now paying attention to Wall Street again."

    Where bold insert Customer

    That's simialr to Digital's downfall. They built some of the best computers in the world, thinking if we build it they will come. But it wasn't what the customers wanted. The same goes for catering to Wall Street. They want short term quick earnings growth; not necessarily long term custoemr growth. That may not be be conducive to achieving a product line that will last and the customers will even want.

    --
    Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III