They're probably looking at the market in terms of revenue, instead of the number of installed seats.
At about $3.5 million for a 72 processor E25K from Sun, it takes a lot of dual processor Xeon sales to catch up.
According to IDC (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS001 53905) the revenue in Q1 2005 was about $4.2 billion each for Unix and Windows servers (the first time Windows has pulled even with Unix), and $1.2 billion for Linux server.
So the Unix and Windows markets in terms of server revenue are each currently about 3.5 times the size of the Linux market (based on Q1 2005).
It's interesting to note that Linux unit shipments increased 31.1% in the quarter compared to 2004. Windows unit shipments increased 10.7% in the same period.
Typical home theatre projectors have a 2000 to 3000 hour bulb life these days. If we use the low end, 2000 hours, you would have to run it five and a half hours a day to burn out a bulb in a year.
A quick check on froogle shows a replacement bulb for the popular Infocus 4805 is $395 USD.
So your cost estimate is double what it should be, and your life estimate is probably half what it should be at best.
A $400 bulb every two years or so is more realistic, and for that you get a 100"+ screen to watch in the comfoprt of your own home. Sounds like a good deal to me compared to the alternatives.
If you've got Sun engineers fixing your Sun issues, why aren't you using HP/IBM/etc or similar to fix your Linux issues? They'd gladly sell you a 3D workstation with a good support contract.
The GeForces might be quicker to market with new features, but how's that in comparison to the Sun boxes which use rebadged 3DLabs hardware (a year or more after the same technology is shipping for the PC from 3DLabs)?
You're concerned about price (and so are we). For the price of a single SB2000+XVR1000 you can get a handful of XW4100s+Quadro4 machines running Linux. There is no stability issue with these machines doing OpenGL, I can vouch for that myself as I'm sure the folks at Dreamworks, ILM, etc can as well.
Stereo support (non-xinerama mode) has been in the Linux nVidia driver since at least November 2002. They added stereo support in Xinerama mode (TwinView) in July of last year. See the release notes for v44.96:
Perhaps you should give the Quadros another look - you could be saving a bunch of money and getting 3 or 4 times the 3D performance you're currently seeing.
Why are you running desktop graphics cards (GeForce) when it sounds like you have a workstation workload?
We run Quadro4 cards on HP workstations. RedHat 7.3 as shipped by HP (scsi, network, gfx drivers pre-installed). We tweak it a bit, but not much (run automount 4.1 so heirarchical mounts work, use xfce4 instead of Gnome or KDE).
We have not seen a single crash, of either Linux or XFree. And we push them very hard - large reservoir models with hundreds of thousands of polygons.
Maybe your problem is the hardware - our configs are similar to what most of the 3D studios are using to run Maya and the like.
Sun's drivers aren't infallible. We've seen rendering errors and crashes on our Blade 1000 and 2000s running Expert3D cards. And Sun has on more than one occasion fixed a bug only to reintroduce it in a later patch level.
If you doubt Sun's OpenGL releases have been bug ridden (it's a challenge for all vendors, not just Sun) just check the patch description for any of the OpenGL releases on sunsolve (if you have a contract login, check patch 112628-24 for example).
I haven't tried any ATI cards on Linux. Their drivers are reportedly getting better, but for a production environment right now, the Quadros are the only cards I'd trust.
The Wildcat4 7110 is a dual headed card, with 256MB of RAM (128MB frame buffer, 128MB texture ram). The XVR-600 has half the RAM and is single headed. You'd need to buy two XVR-600s to do what one 7110 can do. Also, the 7110 is an 8x AGP card, Sun doesn't do AGP, so you get a lesser 64bit 66Mhz PCI version.
You claim it's lightning fast - care to share some Viewperf stats? Sun's OpenGL drivers for the Expert3D (also 3DLabs based) were never stellar and took a while to become stable.
I'm betting a $500 Quadro4 980XGL will give you better performance under Linux than the XVR-600 does under Solaris. And the Blade 1500 holds a maximum 4GB of RAM (so the 64bit argument is moot for this box).
The only reason to buy the 1500 instead of a Xeon running Linux is if your stuck with a Solaris only version of your application. Otherwise, the value proposition Sun is offering with this machine is just too low.
We use Blade 2000s at work. Our HP Linux XW8000s run rings around them for every workload I've been able to come up with.
You should try to get a Forte license and compile with that.
But I do think everyone needs to recognize that Sun hasn't published Viewperf stats for any of their workstations/graphics cards since the Blade 1000 + Expert3D debuted around October 2000 and finally gave them a benchmark that could beat SGI (the Octane at the time). Read into that what you will. I take from it that they'd rather just leave it ambiguous, instead of providing some numbers for you to compare to a 3Ghz x86 box with an nVidia Quadro4 or Quadro FX.
Even if the hardware was close, Sun can't compete driver wise with nVidia.
That's exactly right. Sun just wants customers with Blade 100 and 150 machines to retire them and move up to the 1500. It's twice as fast and will slip right into the same environment that the 100/150 was running in.
What they don't want is for you to compare the 1500 vs. a HP XW6000 or similar offering from Dell or IBM. Because if you did you'd see the x86 box is anywhere from 2 to 5 times faster for most workloads, cheaper, and comes with a 3 year parts and labor warrenty (no expensive Sun contract needed).
Of course you then have to go through the trouble of setting up Linux versions of your applications (and perhaps pressure your vendors into commercializing their Linux ports if they haven't already), and deal with integrating the Linux machines into your network (choose a desktop you can manage easily for all your users, watch out for NFS/automount pitfalls, figure out how you're going to do workstation builds/deployments, etc). Not a problem if you have the right Linux skills inhouse.
But clearly, Sun must be hoping most of their customers take the less painful path and just fork over more money for less performance.
"crunching big data sets" means what? Unless your application needs to stuff >4GB of data into RAM at once, a decent Xeon will outperform the UltraSparc III/IIIi by an order of magnitude.
We've switched from UltraSparcs to x86 servers for our reservoir simulations (Oil&Gas), and we're looking to switch to x86 workstations as soon as our vendors all line up behind the same RedHat release.
We'll keep a couple of Sun boxes around for the rare cases where we really need 64bit (until Opteron is supported by our vendors), but even with the huge datasets with deal with (offshore seismic projects) these instances are rare.
"Don't run out and buy an Athlon 64 just yet..."
on
Is Prescott 64-bit?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm afraid this line of reasoning just doesn't cut it.
Intel does not want a 64bit x86 on the market. They want to lead everyone to Itanium where they don't have those pesky AMD guys competing with them.
It's for this precise reason that everyone SHOULD run out and buy an Athlon64. If nobody buys them, Intel will have no reason to jump into the 64bit x86 market at all.
I for one can't wait for Athlon 64 to hit the market... I need a viable 64bit Linux workstation solution and I need it yesterday.
Linux workstations are replacing Sun workstations hand over fist in nearly every market where Sun still has their foot in the door (Animation, EDA, Financial, Oil&Gas, Medical).
I believe this news is largely irrelevant. By the time Sun ships Gnome2 as their default desktop for Sun workstations, their market share vs. Linux workstations from Dell/Compaq/IBM (which will also be shipping Gnome2) will be close enough to 0 not to matter.
John's been making significant contributions to the Matrox G200/G400 GLX driver. One would have to assume this means he's spending a fair amount of time around linux these days, in addition to everything else.
Slashdot Mirror
They're probably looking at the market in terms of revenue, instead of the number of installed seats.
1 53905) the revenue in Q1 2005 was about $4.2 billion each for Unix and Windows servers (the first time Windows has pulled even with Unix), and $1.2 billion for Linux server.
At about $3.5 million for a 72 processor E25K from Sun, it takes a lot of dual processor Xeon sales to catch up.
According to IDC (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS00
So the Unix and Windows markets in terms of server revenue are each currently about 3.5 times the size of the Linux market (based on Q1 2005).
It's interesting to note that Linux unit shipments increased 31.1% in the quarter compared to 2004. Windows unit shipments increased 10.7% in the same period.
-cjs
I call Bullshit.
Typical home theatre projectors have a 2000 to 3000 hour bulb life these days. If we use the low end, 2000 hours, you would have to run it five and a half hours a day to burn out a bulb in a year.
A quick check on froogle shows a replacement bulb for the popular Infocus 4805 is $395 USD.
So your cost estimate is double what it should be, and your life estimate is probably half what it should be at best.
A $400 bulb every two years or so is more realistic, and for that you get a 100"+ screen to watch in the comfoprt of your own home. Sounds like a good deal to me compared to the alternatives.
See the forums at http://www.avsforum.com/ for all the info your could ever want on this topic.
Tim,
_ 1. 0-4496.html
If you've got Sun engineers fixing your Sun issues, why aren't you using HP/IBM/etc or similar to fix your Linux issues? They'd gladly sell you a 3D workstation with a good support contract.
The GeForces might be quicker to market with new features, but how's that in comparison to the Sun boxes which use rebadged 3DLabs hardware (a year or more after the same technology is shipping for the PC from 3DLabs)?
You're concerned about price (and so are we). For the price of a single SB2000+XVR1000 you can get a handful of XW4100s+Quadro4 machines running Linux. There is no stability issue with these machines doing OpenGL, I can vouch for that myself as I'm sure the folks at Dreamworks, ILM, etc can as well.
Stereo support (non-xinerama mode) has been in the Linux nVidia driver since at least November 2002. They added stereo support in Xinerama mode (TwinView) in July of last year. See the release notes for v44.96:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32
Perhaps you should give the Quadros another look - you could be saving a bunch of money and getting 3 or 4 times the 3D performance you're currently seeing.
-cjs
Why are you running desktop graphics cards (GeForce) when it sounds like you have a workstation workload?
We run Quadro4 cards on HP workstations. RedHat 7.3 as shipped by HP (scsi, network, gfx drivers pre-installed). We tweak it a bit, but not much (run automount 4.1 so heirarchical mounts work, use xfce4 instead of Gnome or KDE).
We have not seen a single crash, of either Linux or XFree. And we push them very hard - large reservoir models with hundreds of thousands of polygons.
Maybe your problem is the hardware - our configs are similar to what most of the 3D studios are using to run Maya and the like.
Sun's drivers aren't infallible. We've seen rendering errors and crashes on our Blade 1000 and 2000s running Expert3D cards. And Sun has on more than one occasion fixed a bug only to reintroduce it in a later patch level.
If you doubt Sun's OpenGL releases have been bug ridden (it's a challenge for all vendors, not just Sun) just check the patch description for any of the OpenGL releases on sunsolve (if you have a contract login, check patch 112628-24 for example).
I haven't tried any ATI cards on Linux. Their drivers are reportedly getting better, but for a production environment right now, the Quadros are the only cards I'd trust.
-cjs
The Wildcat4 7110 is a dual headed card, with 256MB of RAM (128MB frame buffer, 128MB texture ram). The XVR-600 has half the RAM and is single headed. You'd need to buy two XVR-600s to do what one 7110 can do. Also, the 7110 is an 8x AGP card, Sun doesn't do AGP, so you get a lesser 64bit 66Mhz PCI version.
You claim it's lightning fast - care to share some Viewperf stats? Sun's OpenGL drivers for the Expert3D (also 3DLabs based) were never stellar and took a while to become stable.
I'm betting a $500 Quadro4 980XGL will give you better performance under Linux than the XVR-600 does under Solaris. And the Blade 1500 holds a maximum 4GB of RAM (so the 64bit argument is moot for this box).
The only reason to buy the 1500 instead of a Xeon running Linux is if your stuck with a Solaris only version of your application. Otherwise, the value proposition Sun is offering with this machine is just too low.
We use Blade 2000s at work. Our HP Linux XW8000s run rings around them for every workload I've been able to come up with.
-cjs
You should try to get a Forte license and compile with that.
But I do think everyone needs to recognize that Sun hasn't published Viewperf stats for any of their workstations/graphics cards since the Blade 1000 + Expert3D debuted around October 2000 and finally gave them a benchmark that could beat SGI (the Octane at the time). Read into that what you will. I take from it that they'd rather just leave it ambiguous, instead of providing some numbers for you to compare to a 3Ghz x86 box with an nVidia Quadro4 or Quadro FX.
Even if the hardware was close, Sun can't compete driver wise with nVidia.
-cjs
That's exactly right. Sun just wants customers with Blade 100 and 150 machines to retire them and move up to the 1500. It's twice as fast and will slip right into the same environment that the 100/150 was running in.
What they don't want is for you to compare the 1500 vs. a HP XW6000 or similar offering from Dell or IBM. Because if you did you'd see the x86 box is anywhere from 2 to 5 times faster for most workloads, cheaper, and comes with a 3 year parts and labor warrenty (no expensive Sun contract needed).
Of course you then have to go through the trouble of setting up Linux versions of your applications (and perhaps pressure your vendors into commercializing their Linux ports if they haven't already), and deal with integrating the Linux machines into your network (choose a desktop you can manage easily for all your users, watch out for NFS/automount pitfalls, figure out how you're going to do workstation builds/deployments, etc). Not a problem if you have the right Linux skills inhouse.
But clearly, Sun must be hoping most of their customers take the less painful path and just fork over more money for less performance.
-cjs
-cjs
+5 Insightful? Please.
"crunching big data sets" means what? Unless your application needs to stuff >4GB of data into RAM at once, a decent Xeon will outperform the UltraSparc III/IIIi by an order of magnitude.
We've switched from UltraSparcs to x86 servers for our reservoir simulations (Oil&Gas), and we're looking to switch to x86 workstations as soon as our vendors all line up behind the same RedHat release.
We'll keep a couple of Sun boxes around for the rare cases where we really need 64bit (until Opteron is supported by our vendors), but even with the huge datasets with deal with (offshore seismic projects) these instances are rare.
colins
Where's the dialog box to enter a filter?
I'm afraid this line of reasoning just doesn't cut it.
Intel does not want a 64bit x86 on the market. They want to lead everyone to Itanium where they don't have those pesky AMD guys competing with them.
It's for this precise reason that everyone SHOULD run out and buy an Athlon64. If nobody buys them, Intel will have no reason to jump into the 64bit x86 market at all.
I for one can't wait for Athlon 64 to hit the market... I need a viable 64bit Linux workstation solution and I need it yesterday.
-cjs
Agreed, and it's the 3D viz in the oil&gas industry driving things in that slice of the workstation market.
Film Gimp probably does as well on a Matrox card as a Quadro4 900XGL. No knock on Film Gimp, it's just not the driver of this technology.
-cjs
http://www.stuckless.com/~colins
Linux workstations are replacing Sun workstations hand over fist in nearly every market where Sun still has their foot in the door (Animation, EDA, Financial, Oil&Gas, Medical).
I believe this news is largely irrelevant. By the time Sun ships Gnome2 as their default desktop for Sun workstations, their market share vs. Linux workstations from Dell/Compaq/IBM (which will also be shipping Gnome2) will be close enough to 0 not to matter.
http://www.stuckless.com/~colins
Maybe everyone missed this:
o hnc&id=12320
http://finger.planetquake.com/plan.asp?userid=j
John's been making significant contributions to the Matrox G200/G400 GLX driver. One would have to assume this means he's spending a fair amount of time around linux these days, in addition to everything else.
There is a linux client for Networker. Been unsupported for a while now, but even that just changed recently.
-Colin