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Sun Unveils 64-bit Server Line

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the long-overdue dept.

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."

12 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Sun 10 years from now by AnonymousYellowBelly · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Do slashdot readers see Sun being relevant 10 years from now? Will they survive by selling 'mostly' software? I know they sell hardware, but they no longer control the full stack like IBM with POWER. Just a question.

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    Disclosure: I'm stupid
    1. Re:Sun 10 years from now by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ``Do slashdot readers see Sun being relevant 10 years from now? Will they survive by selling 'mostly' software?''

      Actually, I do see them surviving (I don't know about the 10 years, it's a long time), but not selling software. Neither do they, otherwise they wouldn't have taken the decission to open source their OS and provide it as a free download. They seem to even be planning to give away their hardware.

      I think they are realizing where the real money is and moving to a subscription model. You get powerful hardware and one of the greatest OSes for free, and then you have a support contract for a year or more. This gives you support (which most organizations want), and it gives Sun a load of money.

      The above strategy should, at least for a while, put Sun ahead of the competition who still charge you for the initial hardware and/or software purchase, plus the support. Since Sun hardware and software has quite a good reputation, they won't suffer from the "it's free so it must be junk" line of thought as other vendors will. And since they make the OS and control the hardware, they can be expected to provide good support, too. Plus, with the OS being open source, it actually stands a chance of staying in the race with Linux, contrary to many other OSes.

      In short, organizations have every reason to buy into these Sun contracts.

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      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  2. Sky banners by Chmarr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sun are really tooting their horn on this one. They paid for (presumably) a aircraft-towed banner to fly around the SF Bay today.

    Haven't seen one of those in ages :)

  3. Spells Death for the SPARC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The new Sun servers run on Opteron, an implementation of x86-64. These servers spell D.E.A.T.H. for the SPARC implementations.

    The marketing talking head will claim that SPARC lives in Niagara and Rock, but note that Intel is now building a new x86-64 implementation that focuses on multicores just like Niagara and Rock. Given a choice between Niagara/Rock and Intel's/AMD's new multicore chips, most customers will prefer the latter.

    The only future remaining for the SPARC is in esoteric highend systems built by Fujitsu and destined for simulating weather, nuclear explosions, and overpopulation.

    1. Re:Spells Death for the SPARC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      These new Galaxy servers; x4100 & x4200 (x2100 was code named Aquarius and isn't an identical design to the Galaxy architecture) are mainly aimed at grids, we can put 32 of these dual socket, dual core servers into one rack and have a 128-way grid.

      When the Niagara based servers are released we'll have a 1 socket, 8 core, 4 threads per core server which in a 32 server rack gives us a 1024-way grid in one rack ...

      Now, the Niagara CPUs performance (specifically floating point performance) is lower than Opteron (Sun have made no secret of that) but for heavily threaded/moderate computation workloads, a grid of Niagara CPUs looks like a very interesting proposition.

      Rock is rumoured to be SMP capable so rather than building grids of these boxes running seperate OS instances you are able to build 1024-way (maybe more) SMP servers with significantly less power consumption and much higher performance/watt and performance/$ than existing SMP (from ANY company) in a footprint that is a fraction of the size of current highend servers and mainframes.

      I wouldn't say SPARC is dead yet, it might have been a bit ill for a while there, but it's on it's way back.

    2. Re:Spells Death for the SPARC by ValourX · · Score: 2, Interesting

      AMD64 may outperform SPARC at a lower price when you're talking about a 4-CPU system, but how many 128-CPU Opteron servers do you see? Only POWER and UltraSPARC can do that as far as I know. Maybe low-end SPARC workstations will die out, but high-end servers will always need serious superscalar RISC processors.

      -Jem

  4. Review over at Anandtech by Rufus211 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anandtech has a quick review of the X2100 up. Fairly standard, but well designed server it looks like. The big news is the entry level one for only $745. True it doesn't come with a HD, but that's still a hell of a deal for a true server (not a dell desktop box lets call it a server).

  5. Re:specs available? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most Fortune 500 companies use IIS webservers

    Care to show any statistics to back that up?

  6. How about 64 bit java? by wheelbarrow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does this mean that Sun will get serious about supporting a good 64 bit java for these systems? Java systems application design could change radically if somebody can provide a 64 bit JVM that can process efficient garbage collection across very large java heap spaces.

  7. Local Windows admin was impressed by WidescreenFreak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This isn't surprising. These systems really aren't more than a souped-up x86 server that are tweaked to Sun's specifications. But realistically, this can give Sun a broader appeal even to non-Solaris people as well as a larger installation base.

    For example, one of the Windows admins here got a 1U loaner Sun box running Windows {something} Server. (I don't remember which specific version.) He was very impressed by the speed and stability(!!!) of the system. Being a Sun admin for over 10 years, I, of course, had to bust his chops about the Sun logo on the box and "upgrading to a better operating system." That's when he told me that it ran Windows.

    They have a great marketing opportunity: a highly-optimized system that can run not one, not two, but three operating systems! Not only that, it will run all three of them well! Sun also gives a three-year warranty on their hardware. Most of the other systems that I've seen require you to pay extra for a 3-year contract.

    Although I know that many will look at this as "moving to the Dark Side", I don't see a problem with this personally. It gets Sun in front of people that otherwise would not have looked at their hardware. Maybe - just maybe - that will help to broaden Sun's customer base, which can only help in the long run if Sun plays their marketing cards correctly. After all, their current business model is to sell the hardware, but they'll be glad to throw in the OS for free. So, they're not looking to make money off the Windows install. They're looking to make money because they got a sale that otherwise would have gone to HP/Dell/other.

    Who knows? In the future as hardware progresses such admins might say, "Well, we have this Sun box that doesn't really do anything now. Let's download Solaris and see what it's like." Of course, I'd rather have them say, "Hey, you want this? We don't use it anymore..." :)

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    The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
  8. and they'll be running Windows... by Banishedwun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A friend of mine who works for Sun said they got the internal message this morning that this was on the way and that they'll come with Windows on em. "Why?", I asked, to which he replied that the talk around the office is that Sun will be focussing on application software versus OS and Hardware. He also said that airplanes with banners would be circling the skies of Austin this afternoon. Either way I'm curious.

  9. Healthy competition by shawn_f · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We bought 5 of the V20z as soon as they appeared, and have loved them. I am impressed with them, even though I have heard that Sun did not build them. Running the latest linux kernel from SuSE, and have yet to make them break a sweat. I think it is about time Sun got exited about something. Even if they give up ultraSPARC, they hired the guy from AMD who helped develop the Opteron x86-64, and would seem to me that it would be in their best interest in capitalizing on the investment. It would be nice to see someone other than Dell and HP in this arena. Remember once again, the Sun was one of the first with 64bit technology, and they were also one of the first, if not the first, to offer Opteron servers.

    Maybe they will lead again...

    Go ahead, Toot your horn Sun!!! Keep making these good decisions!!