This is a dual Opteron, with 350 watt power supply. They claim "quiet cooling fans," but as a practical matter, dual Opteron in a small, enclosed space will not be that quiet. For a piece of audio equipment, wouldn't it make more sense to cut back a bit on the processing power, and go for completely silent? Or alternatively, one could physically seperate the noise from the source. I don't think this would matter much on-stage with mega amplifiers, but in a recording studio, or for quieter music in a smaller environment (for use at home, etc.), do you really want the humming of a fan? Personally, I'd take a 1GHz C3 chip, running fanless, on a MicroITX motherboard probably, one of the quieter hard drives, in an acoustice enclosure. If I really need the high-end speed, I'd blow the money on making the case into a large heat sink, and use heat pipes.
One thing to bear in mind is that this is a Blade.
The Blade is Sun's low-end series of machines. They are not fast. They are not reliable. I've seen a fair number of the SunBlade 100s overheat and die. I've had one Blade die over and over and over again. They have low-grade IDE hard drives, and the rest of the system is of comparable quality. There isn't any Sun magic in there to prevent the industry-standard low-end IDE drive or low-end PSU from failing, and the Sun components of the system are of comparable quality (in some cases, of comparable quality to an eMachine). Anyone who tells you otherwise is either clueless or trying to sell you something.
A high-end x86 machine will blow away these Blades on almost every benchmark, and cost a lot less. This model Sparc has higher IPC than an x86, but not 3x higher, and more than 3x lower MHz.
The reliability advantages of the Sun's come on higher-end machines. The throughput advantages come on higher-end machines. All of the standard advantages people have cited in this forum come from higher-end machines. Someone mentioned large databases -- the Blade 1500 only supports 4GB of RAM, and beyond that you're swapping to IDE. No performance boost there.
These machines are engineered for cost -- not speed, not reliability, not network throughput, not memory bandwidth, not upgradeability, and not anything else. We've bought Blades for just under a grand. When you consider how much more it costs to have your own custom-made CPU, motherboard, chipset, case, etc, without the advantages of mass-production, that's very, very cheap.
However, sometimes you need a Sun. Over here, we have some very high-end Suns (64 CPU machines, etc.). We have a lot of custom software that only runs on Suns. A lot of mainstream engineering applications do not have GNU/Linux ports, and we really don't want to be touching Windows. Having the network standardized to the same type of machine, and having everyone standardized to the same software helps a lot. This is one place where the low-end Suns fit in. You don't buy them because they are faster or better than an x86. You buy them because the high-end suns are faster and better than an x86, and it's often convenient to have matching low-end machines on your network.
From the Novell-SCO sale agreement, section 4.16b (source: Groklaw):
(b) Buyer shall not, and shall not have the authority to, amend, modify
or waive any right under or assign any SVRX License without the prior
written consent of Seller. In addition, at Seller's sole discretion and
direction, Buyer shall amend, supplement, modify or waive any rights
under, or shall assign any rights to, any SVRX License to the extent so
directed in any manner or respect by Seller. In the event that Buyer
shall fail to take any such action concerning the SVRX Licenses as
required herein, Seller shall be authorized, and hereby is granted, the
rights to take any action on Buyer's own behalf.
In other words, if SCO sues a Novell customer for violating SVRX copyright, Novell may simply compell SCO to issue them a SVRX license permitting them to keep using the SVRX code. The indemnity for Novell is pretty much full-proof for Novell.
The question we should be asking is why Novell doesn't exercise this option to grant full rights to IBM and others. My guess is that they are trying to maintain a bargaining chip. Once this card is played, Novell/SuSE will be in a very weak position, due to the non-compete in the original Novell-SCO agreement. SCO would lose the war with IBM, but would have no reason not to squash Novell. That leaves SCO and Novell are in a bit of a cold war, where either can destroy the other completely, resulting in mutual annhilation. In the meantime, both sides are supporting their own versions of Afghanistan and Vietnam against the other.
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This is a dual Opteron, with 350 watt power supply. They claim "quiet cooling fans," but as a practical matter, dual Opteron in a small, enclosed space will not be that quiet. For a piece of audio equipment, wouldn't it make more sense to cut back a bit on the processing power, and go for completely silent? Or alternatively, one could physically seperate the noise from the source. I don't think this would matter much on-stage with mega amplifiers, but in a recording studio, or for quieter music in a smaller environment (for use at home, etc.), do you really want the humming of a fan? Personally, I'd take a 1GHz C3 chip, running fanless, on a MicroITX motherboard probably, one of the quieter hard drives, in an acoustice enclosure. If I really need the high-end speed, I'd blow the money on making the case into a large heat sink, and use heat pipes.
One thing to bear in mind is that this is a Blade.
The Blade is Sun's low-end series of machines. They are not fast. They are not reliable. I've seen a fair number of the SunBlade 100s overheat and die. I've had one Blade die over and over and over again. They have low-grade IDE hard drives, and the rest of the system is of comparable quality. There isn't any Sun magic in there to prevent the industry-standard low-end IDE drive or low-end PSU from failing, and the Sun components of the system are of comparable quality (in some cases, of comparable quality to an eMachine). Anyone who tells you otherwise is either clueless or trying to sell you something.
A high-end x86 machine will blow away these Blades on almost every benchmark, and cost a lot less. This model Sparc has higher IPC than an x86, but not 3x higher, and more than 3x lower MHz.
The reliability advantages of the Sun's come on higher-end machines. The throughput advantages come on higher-end machines. All of the standard advantages people have cited in this forum come from higher-end machines. Someone mentioned large databases -- the Blade 1500 only supports 4GB of RAM, and beyond that you're swapping to IDE. No performance boost there.
These machines are engineered for cost -- not speed, not reliability, not network throughput, not memory bandwidth, not upgradeability, and not anything else. We've bought Blades for just under a grand. When you consider how much more it costs to have your own custom-made CPU, motherboard, chipset, case, etc, without the advantages of mass-production, that's very, very cheap.
However, sometimes you need a Sun. Over here, we have some very high-end Suns (64 CPU machines, etc.). We have a lot of custom software that only runs on Suns. A lot of mainstream engineering applications do not have GNU/Linux ports, and we really don't want to be touching Windows. Having the network standardized to the same type of machine, and having everyone standardized to the same software helps a lot. This is one place where the low-end Suns fit in. You don't buy them because they are faster or better than an x86. You buy them because the high-end suns are faster and better than an x86, and it's often convenient to have matching low-end machines on your network.