Sun Unveils 64-bit Server Line

And it's based on Opterons... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-12 05:38 · Score: 3, Informative

The future of 64-bit Sun servers is the Opteron.

Should we take this as the final sign that Sun is giving up on Sparc?

And as they move toward "normal" chips, should we expect that Sun will be able to continue to offer the hardware advantages (say, to do with reliability) that they held with Sparc, or are we going to be seeing them move closer to being a plain-box Opteron reseller-- in the same way that as Apple is moving to plain-jane x86, they are also giving up on technologies such as Open Firmware?

Re:And it's based on Opterons... by bradleycarpenter · 2005-09-12 05:49 · Score: 5, Informative

There are not white boxes, they are in house boxes built from the ground up Andy Bechtolsheim. Supposedly sun is working on a 8 socket box...thus you could have 16 opterons cores running in one box. Very interesting future for Opteron and Sun.
Re:And it's based on Opterons... by bradleycarpenter · 2005-09-12 06:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well, say you are a large corporation that only buys from Tier 1 manufactures. Sure joe schmo can go get one from random white box corporation, but in the corporate world they stick to specific suppliers that they have contracts and provide 24/7 support.

yes.... by fuelvolts · 2005-09-12 05:38 · Score: 3, Funny

...but does it have 64-bit drivers for my HP all-in-one printer?

Sun 10 years from now by AnonymousYellowBelly · 2005-09-12 05:39 · 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

Re:Sun 10 years from now by ehovland · 2005-09-12 06:00 · Score: 4, Informative

> Do slashdot readers see Sun being relevant 10 years from now?

It depends on whether you think Sun is turning the corner with these new servers. The original opteron line was basically a company on life support getting pretty much reference models out the door. While these machines show Sun's polish all over it. I think these servers compete well with HP and Dell's offering and they have Sun's polish. I am hopeful. But ten years is a long time from now.

> Will they survive by selling 'mostly' software?

Huh? This is a server line that runs Solaris or Linux. They are definitely still selling hardware and giving away the operating system.

> I know they sell hardware, but they no longer control the full stack like IBM with POWER.

Sun has almost never had control over the full stack. They sold you the hardware with a free (as in beer) operating system on it. Then you put on the application/server software. They might help you buy that application/server software. But they have never made it.
Re:Sun 10 years from now by njcoder · 2005-09-12 06:07 · Score: 2, Informative

" 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."
Huh? This story is about a new line of servers and youq uestion if sone is selling mostly software!?!?! And you get modded interesting. I think it's pretty interesting that someone thinks it's a valid question.
These boxes are completely designed by Sun. Though the CPU is not manufactured by them they work together closely with AMD on the chip.
There's a good interview with Andy Bechtolsheim that includes some of the details between the AMD/Sun relationship concerning opteron.

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Open Source Java DAO Generator
Re:Sun 10 years from now by websaber · 2005-09-12 06:40 · Score: 4, Informative

You would not believe how much sun junk financial companies have lying around. I am talking about I have worked in companies were they have racks and racks of maxed out 4500's (the ram alone can cost 20g) running a single process at low utilization. The advantage of sun is that they are the only company that has a unified industrial grade hardware /software system so financial companies will pay thru the nose for that peace of mind. One admin told me that the only reason they really still use sun is because that it pipes input and output thru the serial port from the second power is turned on. You can give all the TCO arguments in the world no body is going to care if they have to explain to the CEO why a billion dollar (Literally) transaction failed because two vendors blamed each other for a mistake. Until a Linux company REALLY gets it there will always be room for sun.

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"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"
Re:Sun 10 years from now by RAMMS+EIN · 2005-09-12 07:42 · 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.

Suns have been 64 bit for a while now... by allanc · 2005-09-12 05:39 · 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).

Re:Suns have been 64 bit for a while now... by jellomizer · 2005-09-12 06:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well Slashdot readers in general are anti-Sun, Because they havent jumped head first in the Linux Bandwagon, but more like test the waters and take a step, and they also produce a competing OS to Linux, Which has some features and ability that is much better then Linux but we wont talk about those, which is not GNU compatible. So Sun has to be Evil. So what better way to post an article that makes Sun seem like a slow to react company then to say that they are just releasing 64 bit processors. While in truth they were one of the first.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Suns have been 64 bit for a while now... by photon317 · 2005-09-12 07:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

That's a great reverse-reverse-psychology troll or something, but it's hardly insightful. I have always been a Sun supporter over the decade or so I've been working with Solaris on Sparc. I have always said that they were the best *nix thing going out there, compared to their competition. But I was also always a fan of Linux where it was applicable.

But the time came (some time ago now) to admit that Sun has in fact missed the boat on Linux. What made it especially frustrating was that, of all of the commercial *nix vendors, Sun was in the best position to capitalize on the Linux wave. They were already all about developing and promoting open standards (think NFS and NIS back in the day, among many others). They were already the best non-free platform to build and use open source software on. Hell starting with Solaris 8 they were shipping a good deal of open source software with stock Solaris. But some idiot(s) in charge of the company completely lacked the vision to make it happen. I can only imagine how much better a position Sun would be in (and how much better off all consumers of *nix would be) if Sun had re-centered themselves around Linux kernels going forward back in the late 90's or even 2001-ish. They could've turned their kernel engineering teams to work on Linux on Ultrasparc (and Opteron), and could've brought a lot of scalability and other enhancements with them to the Linux kernel in general to boot.

Even now that Sun has started to turn the corner on Linux from their previous stances (which were to ignore it, and then to marginalize it as a toy), their stance still smells a lot like, "Sure, run linux on our Sun-branded but otherwise whitebox-like and overpriced x86 and x86_64 hardware, but only for crappy unimportant edge devices. Leave all the real computing to a real operating system like Solaris." Meanwhile smart companies are working out strategies to transition off of the last remaining Ultrasparc behemoths they have left in the corner of the datacenter while the majority of their real computing is already happening on Linux today. Average not-so-smart companies will be doing this in a few years.

I don't hate Sun, and I don't think they're Evil. But I think someone fell asleep at the wheel there and completely failed to take advantage of the Linux wave like Sun should have. If anything, I feel sad for them, it's tragic to watch a great company go down like this. They could still turn it around, but I don't have much faith anymore that they will.

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11*43+456^2
Re:Suns have been 64 bit for a while now... by mrbooze · 2005-09-12 07:52 · 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.

Sky banners by Chmarr · 2005-09-12 05:39 · 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 :)

Spells Death for the SPARC by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-12 05:42 · 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.

Re:Spells Death for the SPARC by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-12 05:58 · 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.
Re:Spells Death for the SPARC by SiliconJesus · 2005-09-12 06:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sun has had x86 servers for a while. It has had no effect on their SPARC sales, nor will it in the future. People who buy Sun will continue to purchace their SPARC servers until they discontinue making them. I'd be willing to say with the SPARC IV's coming out soon, that Sun is in no hurry to switch off their home platform.

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Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
Re:Spells Death for the SPARC by ValourX · 2005-09-12 06:20 · 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
Re:Spells Death for the SPARC by ValourX · 2005-09-12 07:56 · Score: 2, Informative

Opterons were not designed to go above 8 parallel CPUs. SPARC/POWER/IA64 systems, two of which are RISC and one of which is VLIW, were designed for massively parallel computing. That they are used in lower-end 1 and 2-CPU systems doesn't diminish the fact that they can do much more.

When I typed the original message I forgot about Itanium2, so being RISC is not a prerequisite for massively parallel systems. All of the above are superscalar designs.

-Jem
Re:Spells Death for the SPARC by SQL+Error · 2005-09-12 10:20 · Score: 2, Informative

Wrong.

The Opteron supports glueless 8-chip systems. Just wire the HyperTransport links together and off you go. Of course, with dual-core that's already 16 CPUs, and will be 32 CPUs next year. And it's quite possible to add bridge chips to support more than 8 Opterons.

All of the above are superscalar designs.

Including the Opteron.

Sun is not giving up on SPARC by turgid · 2005-09-12 05:43 · Score: 5, Informative

Sun has a comprehensive roadmap for UltraSPARC going forward and combining forces with Fujutsu on SPARC64.

These new servers absolutely rock, and at superb prices.

I once had the pleasure of a 4-way Opteron v40z with a development version of 64-bit Solaris 10. It was a screamer, especially compared to our 4-way Dell P4 Xeon box, and 64-bit.

It was plenty fast enough to host 4 zones and several developers working on KDE, gcc and all manner of other stuff.

At last, Sun looks like it's turning the corner (despite the best efforts of some of its PHBs - no names mentioned).

Good luck Sun.

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Stick Men

Review over at Anandtech by Rufus211 · 2005-09-12 05:45 · 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).

Favorite line... by Otter · 2005-09-12 05:46 · Score: 3, Funny

Sun used to dominate the financial industry, but lost its edge during the dot-com era, according to Singer.
"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."

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What I'm listening to now on Pandora...

Re:Favorite line... by Jherek+Carnelian · 2005-09-12 06:41 · Score: 2, Funny

we got distracted by all these people with pierced body parts and blue hair,

What I want to know is, what the heck were they doing paying attention to a bunch of grandmothers? Most of them can't even use a VCR, much less Solaris...

Re:specs available? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-12 05:48 · Score: 3, Interesting

Most Fortune 500 companies use IIS webservers

Care to show any statistics to back that up?

No, no, no, no. by Karma_fucker_sucker · 2005-09-12 05:49 · 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.

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

Re:No, no, no, no. by HairyCanary · 2005-09-12 06:23 · Score: 2, Informative

Didn't RTFA did ya? When they say they're paying attention to Wall Street, they don't mean as investors. They mean Wall Street as customers.

How about 64 bit java? by wheelbarrow · 2005-09-12 05:53 · 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.

Re:How about 64 bit java? by farble1670 · 2005-09-12 07:53 · Score: 2, Informative

sun has produce 64-bit JVMs for quite some time. i don't know the exact java version where that support entered, but it's been around as long as i can remember.
is this what you meant?

Let's hope they run better than the W2100z WS by jasonmicron · 2005-09-12 05:55 · Score: 4, Informative

Let's hope that they run better than the W2100z workstations. Dual Opteron 250 processors and 16 gigs of RAM (at least the model that my company bought) and all we have had so far is horrendous problems.

4 BIOS updates later and the problems have dwindled a bit but we constantly get BSP error messages on boot up and random DIMM error messages during POST (on both sockets and chips that have been thoroughly tested and known to be good). Daughter processor cards have been bad as well (already replaced 4 in a batch of 40 which, according to Sun is "acceptable rate of failure").

Their latest BIOS update (version R01_B4_S2, released last month) does resolve the frequency of some of these errors but now we have machines that lock up on that BIOS release but not previous ones.

I only post this because the chips are Opteron 250s by AMD (64-bit) and the main board is another AMD.

Based on my experience with these workstations I wouldn't touch anything put out by Sun until they can get a quality control department set up and running anything with AMD chips.

Re:Let's hope they run better than the W2100z WS by hkb · 2005-09-12 06:21 · Score: 5, Funny

Standard Slashdot Response:

You obviously don't know how to admin Linux you fucking cluebie, go back to Windows. Oh, Solaris? Sun sucks, use Linux.

+3 Funny

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/* Moderating all non-anonymous trolls up since 2004 */
Re:Let's hope they run better than the W2100z WS by j1bb3rj4bb3r · 2005-09-12 06:28 · Score: 2, Informative

Let's hope that they run better than the W2100z workstations.

They should... they are entirely different boxes. The new ones are from the acquisition of Kealia (Andy Bechtolsheim's startup).

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*yawn*
Re:Let's hope they run better than the W2100z WS by Zemplar · 2005-09-12 07:11 · Score: 2, Informative

Strange. I've got a W2100z myself (dual 246's) and have been nothing but impressed by the hardware. I've run Solaris 10, Linux, and Windows XP on the hardware and each performed as good as can be expected for each OS; as each OS has it's own characteristics.

Re:I love the bit in the article by bradleycarpenter · 2005-09-12 05:56 · Score: 4, Informative

Um, they are opteron servers. They run Windows/Linux fine, and any other OS that works on x86. In fact Sun now has a support contract that provides windows support.

Microsoft Windows is fully supported by Sun, too by assantisz · 2005-09-12 06:00 · Score: 5, Informative

Sun also offers full technical support for Microsoft Windows on their hardware. See this for more info.

hey no offense, but... by mihalis · 2005-09-12 06:14 · Score: 4, Informative

you're wrong on every point. Seriously!

Suns don't run Windows and they don't run Linux

Actually, these new machines run Solaris, Linux and Windows - they are even on WHQL. They are the second-gen of Sun's AMD based x86-64 machines, and there were some intel x86-32 based systems before that, so arguably they are on their 3d or 4th gen of machines which can run Windows, if you like.

Compare and contrast this with Sun and HP who basically say "service, hey, you bought it, the check cleared and if it stops working then come see us about a service contract (which we will charge you up the wazoo for)".

Sun always quotes multiple service contract prices right there on the web page when you order the hardware (different levels of service).

Miracle machine! by Bake · 2005-09-12 06:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

This must be some miracle machine. From the linked article..
The two hard drives can be setup for RAID 0, 1 or 10 via the BIOS.

Now, it may be a few years since I took classes in college that touched on various RAID levels, but one thing that I DO remember is that RAID 10 requires a minimum of 4 physical drives...

woo customers? by blanks · 2005-09-12 06:20 · Score: 2, Funny

"servers represent the company's bid to woo customers, particularly the financial industry sector, away from rival server vendors Hewlett-Packard and Dell." So these severs will be faster then most intel based processors with a lower price tag? Didn't think so.

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TruePunk | Games

Come on, give people more credit then that.. by cbreaker · 2005-09-12 06:25 · Score: 2, Funny

Seriously, we all know Sparc is 64-bit, has been for some time. Most of us also know that they've dabbled in the Opteron processors not very long ago, and that these new servers are probably all Opterons.

If not, maybe you shouldn't be reading Slashdot. It's too technical for you. Go read C|Net.

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- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -

Re:I love the bit in the article by j1bb3rj4bb3r · 2005-09-12 06:25 · Score: 2, Informative

The biggest problem I foresee for Sun in competing with Dell is simple, Suns don't run Windows and they don't run Linux

are you on crack?
The Galaxy boxes run Solaris, Linux, or Windoze.
The current Opterons do as well.
RTFA.

why is gross misinformation being modded up as Interesting???

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*yawn*

X4100 Review at InfoWorld by PCM2 · 2005-09-12 06:27 · Score: 3, Informative

InfoWorld also got an early look at the X4100, though the review doesn't specify that model number because it hadn't even been announced yet. The price tag is ten times more than that of the X2100 the parent mentions, but as far as I understand it, the X2100 is pretty much an Asian white-box system. It's the X4100 and X4200 systems, a 1U and 2U respectively, that are Sun's new flagship custom designs. The big news is that InfoWorld's reviewers actually seem to have some fairly complementary things to say about them, which hasn't always been the case for Sun's AMD hardware in the past.

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Breakfast served all day!

Local Windows admin was impressed by WidescreenFreak · 2005-09-12 06:43 · 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.

"Galaxy" class systems by t35t0r · 2005-09-12 06:50 · Score: 3, Funny

Trio of Sun Fire systems are first of 'Galaxy' class machines ..Its mission, to take system admins where no system admins have ever gone before.

and they'll be running Windows... by Banishedwun · 2005-09-12 07:07 · 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.

Healthy competition by shawn_f · 2005-09-12 07:08 · 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!!

Galaxy? Does Sun have no organizational memory? by winkydink · 2005-09-12 07:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

The last project named Galaxy (at least the last one I remember), was when Sun decided to support multiprocessing in the early 90's. Asymetrical multiprocessing that it. There was a joke runniing around at the time thet went comething like:

"How do you make your Sun server run at 1/4 speed?"

"Add 3 more processors"

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"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

Airplane circling Dell with a message from Sun by Captain+BooBoo · 2005-09-12 07:40 · Score: 2, Informative

There is a small plane that has been flying around and around the Dell campus with a huge banner saying " Sun has x64 servers...WATCH OUT DELL! Its funny...the plane has been flying around for well over an hour now.

The Linux Boat? by phliar · 2005-09-12 07:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sun was in the best position to capitalize on the Linux wave....I can only imagine how much better a position Sun would be in if Sun had re-centered themselves around Linux kernels going forward back in the late 90's or even 2001-ish.

What "wave" would that be? Sun already had a Unix at least as good as Linux. Face it, the only thing Linux has going for it is support for all sorts of hardware. Other than that, Linux can be supremely annoying -- no manpages, for one thing. Add the Solaris 10 features like dtrace and Linux starts to look a little less appealing. And remember that in the late-90s, Linux was still a little more primitive than Solaris. They'd have been better off spending money on Solaris x86 back then instead of almost abandoning it.

Disclaimer: I run mostly Linux at home, alongside a couple of OpenBSD machines. At work, Linux and Solaris x86. IMHO what Sun should do is stop treating Gnu software like orphans and make all the Gnu tools -- not just gcc -- easy to install, preferably installed by default.

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Unlimited growth == Cancer.

Bah! 64-bit is for kids! by Anne_Nonymous · 2005-09-12 07:53 · Score: 2

My server fell onto a concrete floor and now it's about a thousand bits.

UltraSPARC was not the first 64-bit CPU. by emil · 2005-09-12 08:40 · Score: 2, Informative

They were definitely preceeded by the DEC Alpha.

Re:Our sunfire was one of our worst investments. by foorilious · 2005-09-12 08:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

As far as I know, there is not a single "Sun Fire" system ever made that didn't use bone-standard SCSI disks manufactured by IBM, Seagate, Fujitsu, or Hitatchi, etc (with 'proprietary' drive rails). That being said, the Sun-branded disks on their website are ridiculously overpriced, but there has never been anything technological to stop you from using whatever disks you please.

I really hate this "proprietary" phrase getting thrown around with regard to Sun. Forget that they're using AMD CPUs now (the whole point of TFA), and please go ahead and tell me how SPARC is proprietary and Intel isn't. I'd love to hear this. Not to mention that Sun has probably done more for open standards and protocols over the years than any other single company that comes readily to mind. Open source is not necessary for open standards, which really, is what matters far more to me. But, even so, Solaris is now open source as well. But please don't let over 20 years of history and assorted facts stop /. folks from crying "proprietary!" every time Sun is mentioned in the news.

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