You do know that you can buy an x86 server from
Sun with Solaris and support for less than an
equivalent server from Dell with RedHat AS don't
you? Sun is no longer about overinflated prices on SPARC only.
I am sorry but you must still be living in the
world of "25 years ago". I do not believe for one
minute that new linux kernel code is always dropped
into the source tree bug free. This is a fact of life. Having good observability and tracing enables bugs to be located quickly, understood quickly and fixed first time in the shortest time. Dtrace takes this a step further by enabling dynamic tracing points in the kernel AND in a userland applications (every instruction if you want). And yes I do know
what I am talking about having used these tools to find and fix bugs and remembering what it was like before having them.
For FUCKS SAKE, I am soooo tired of these posts.
GNU tools have been shipping with Solaris since
Solaris 8 ( year 2000). If you want OSS then just
go and get it the same as you would for a linux distro.
Try out pkg-get from blastwave - it's very good.
The reason why Sun seems archaic in some areas is
backward compatability. You would be surprised
how many people still rely on sh etc.
Not entirely different machines. 4800's ability to do hardward domains is largely matched by pSeries logical partitioning, something a Sun V-series can't do.
With Solaris 10 you will be able to have zones. For
no additional cost over the OS license. Also, I
was never entirely convinced by not having
electrical isolation inside a partition which you
do get with a domain.
It has been some time since Sun's technology has been equated as 'best of breed', probably going back to the Sparc III series. Most of their install base at this point is in a renewal cycle, or due to 3rd party support dependencies.
In terms of core performance you are probably right
(although power5 has great fp performance when given
exclusive access to 36MB level 3 cache it's int
performance isn't exactly stellar. Guess whats
more important for servers.). However if you look
at actual systems performance then things are a lot closer. Sun is innovating, the problem is
execution and time to market.
HP is betting the shop on commodity based 64 bit computing in Itanium, Itanium II, etc.
They sure are and with not much success.
IBM has Power5, Power6, etc. A very solid roadmap after years of unix neglect in the 90s. Although Power4 was a bit weak, Power5 looks great and Power6 will definitely be on schedule. What is Sun's latest roadmap schedule? I can't remember, they keep changing the roadmap...
Well, I don't think cancelling two cores equates to not having a roadmap. Sun have a pretty good roadmap actually. USIV speed dump, USIV+ next
year, Niagara next year, Rock and Niagara2 in
2007/2008. With APL (Fujitsu) filling in the
product line in the mid term. I think Sun should
be applauded for their willingness to do something
different with the throughput computing ideology.
IBM is "AIX, or Linux, or whatever you want to run on our hardware...we won't stop you."
A long as IGS is getting a fat wad we don't care
more like. Your argument is backward. IBM have
the most proprietary and locked in offerings on
the market. How long do you think they will be
developing AIX? Have you seen how much ISV
support there is for 5.3L (required to use all
the bells and whistles of P5)
Solaris is a good OS, but I wouldn't pick my hardware based on it. And the best thing is that whatever Solaris can do, the Open Source community can mimick (better) 2-4 years down the line. There is no compelling reason to be bleeding edge all the time, especially in corporate environments...
You should pick your hardware based upon which
apps you want to run. This has far more dependance
on the OS than the hardware. So, to correct
your bleeding edge statement, it's more
important in the corporate environment to run
supported apps on a supported stable os than it
is to have the latest 'bleeding edge' hardware.
IBM's stuff is always a forklift upgrade, you
can still mix and match Sun uniboards (i.e.
different proc speeds etc.) in serengeti chassis
until Rock based systems are available.
Yeah, I know how you feel. I work for I'BEE'M.
We have to work 20 hour days for a pittance. It's
a hard day as well. Teaching monkeys to play
table tennis can be frustrating at times.
They also make dogs smoke for our pleasure. At
least they are not interested in making money.
Now, if Sun made Solaris on x86 just as good or better than Solaris on SPARC, then that would seriously de-value their hardware-software package. It would be death.
Well, they are built from the same source tree so
I don't see how they would be different. I guess
you weren't actually interested in the facts though
were you?
1) Not true.
2) Not true.
3) Fair point.
4) They had a lot of cash on hand BEFORE *selling
out to Redmond.
* In this case means accepting damages and
compensation from Microsoft in order to satisfy
patent litigation issues.
"If Sun can get their shit together and beat RedHat the old-fashion way, so be it."
Haha, someone who doesn't have their linux/foss
blinkers on. Let me explain the premise of the
original Sun statement:
Linux on x86 has made big inroads into Sun's
business when Sun was seen as proprietary and
expensive.
Sun can't compete with 'Linux' because 'Linux'
as an entity doesn't exist. Red Hat, on the
other hand, DOES exist and is directly
competing with Sun in OS support services (Red
Hat technically don't sell the OS).
So what Sun are actually saying is:
Hey, we kind of accept Linux now, in fact we will
sell it you (and support it now) if you want it.
We are not competing against or anti Linux. We
ARE competing against Red Hat.
So, again to boil it down, Sun are saying that
they will compete with another company in the
same marketplace. Why is this news?
Sun genuinely believe that they have products
which provide value to their customers and can
differentiate from other offerings in the field
(Solaris 10, Opteron line, storage). Why the
hell SHOULDN'T they try and sell this stuff and
compete???
Well, FUD is FUD - It's not restricted to marketeering. You make several 'opinions' which when asked to substantiate cannot or will not. Opinions should be based on facts. Can you please post the facts which you base your opinions on please so we can all be enlightened? Whats your beef with Sun?
Furthermore, the fact that they are not x86 compatible and that they will (apparently) be using Solaris as their OS are two more big strikes against them because what "LOW END" customer is going to have the expertise to manage those machines or the software to run on them?
Well, who said they were going to be Solaris only? I am pretty sure they will run Linux. And the argument regarding expertise to manage these machines is vacuous. Apparently people have resources to manage Linux but not Solaris - you GIVE ME a break!
These guys are trying to do things big and correctly.
I think "big" and "correctly" are themselves contradictions in terms these days. Solaris is bloated, Java is bloated, and now they are producing a bloated CPU chip.
None of this will stop commodity hardware and open source from kicking Sun's butt and driving them out of business, because ultimately, people don't want "big", they want manageable and cost-effective. And that Sun isn't delivering anymore.
Ahhh... to be 38 and be this guy. President of Sun at 38 years old... what a life.
I'm sure he is well paid, but so are lots of other jobs. Other than that, I would imagine his job is causing him ulcers because deep down, he must know that his company is in deep trouble.
You didn't post this complete pile of FUD? And
don't you feel the need to justify any of the
staements contained therein?
And who are you to say what is and isn't the
right direction in kernel design
You do realize that Niagara is for the LOW END
don't you? These are not going to be expensive
machines, in fact, they are more like alternatives
for racks of commodity (x86) hardware.
Where does it say Niagara is for heavy iron? Where?
Niagara is for network facing loads and is meant to
go, intially, into 1U and 2U boxes.
In fact, re-reading your post it's 100% crap. Where
did you come up with:
heir high end would seem the be eroded by the increasing prevalance of x86-64 systems.
WTF!!!
Are you saying that you can post whatever
unsupported bullshit you like but it's other
peoples responsibility to point that out?
And then call them out for NOT doing so.
Man you are too funny.
@jeif1k
You do realize that whole fucking point of Niagara
is to address the problems you talk about when
discussing CPU and memory? Niagara is a single die,
8 cores each capable of running 4 threads
simultaneously. Sun have realized that core
performance is far outstripping memory subystem
performance. Just look at itanium.
Niagara hides memory latency (stalls) by
scheduling different threads (1 cycle latency
to context switch). Individual thread performance
will suck, particularly in Niagara1. However,
throughput of massively multithreaded workloads
(webservers etc.) will be impressive.
Particularly as these will be in 1U and 2U rack
systems.
Sun are really starting to turn the corner now.
I think the 1U system in question is the v20Z
(opteron) or USIIIi based.
POWER5 is a superior CORE to the UltrasparcIV,
there is no doubt about that. However, if you
look at systemic performance Sun does pretty well
(SAP, STREAM etc.). Most people running Oracle
don't really care about SPECfp performance really.
Suns value is investment protection (retaining the
same chassis, just upgrade the uniboards - you
can even have different cpus and speeds in the same
chassis) and Solaris 10. UltrasparcIV+ still
probably won't be as fast per core as P5 but I
expect in systemic benchmarks that Sun will do
pretty well.
Either you live in some alternate universe in which vendors work on bugs for individual users, or you've been smoking some exceptionally strong weed. Or, possibly, you don't have a clue.
I don't understand what you are trying to say here.
In my experience bugs are normally raised by
individuals who work for organizations with support
contracts which, I believe, the poster was
alluding to in order to illustrate the
differences between running supported vs.
unsupported software.
Despite what Sun has to say on the matter, Itanium system and processor sales have been increasing steadily since 2H,2000prior to that, there was a big lull in demand because few wanted to buy underperforming Itanium 1 machines when the Itanium 2 was expected rather soon (and announced relatively early).
Sorry, do you have any numbers to back this up. It's
my understanding that itanium shipments are still
insignificant wrt sparc/power shipments.
It depends what your TCO estimates for an installation are. Typically, your buying costs aren't the signifcant part of fielding a solution.
You need to look at how much it is going to cost
to run (power/heat/real estate/maintenance) and how it costs you when it ain't running.
Also, just throwing this out there as I don't have
any specs to hand, does anyone know if commodity
hardware is accurate enough (i.e IEEE FP precision
etc.) to be used in all cases a 'super computer' (sic) is used?.
Hmmm. I would say also that first byte latency is
also very important in a lot of/most workloads. Clusters
can mask this on some workloads through parallelization. Introduce interdependencies and it loses some of it's advantages. I know I will get flamed for this but I think Sun understands this quite well hence the philosophy behind throughput computing and their next gen core designs (Niagara, Niagara2, Rock)
Slashdot Mirror
You do know that you can buy an x86 server from Sun with Solaris and support for less than an equivalent server from Dell with RedHat AS don't you? Sun is no longer about overinflated prices on SPARC only.
I am sorry but you must still be living in the world of "25 years ago". I do not believe for one minute that new linux kernel code is always dropped into the source tree bug free. This is a fact of life. Having good observability and tracing enables bugs to be located quickly, understood quickly and fixed first time in the shortest time. Dtrace takes this a step further by enabling dynamic tracing points in the kernel AND in a userland applications (every instruction if you want). And yes I do know what I am talking about having used these tools to find and fix bugs and remembering what it was like before having them.
For FUCKS SAKE, I am soooo tired of these posts. GNU tools have been shipping with Solaris since Solaris 8 ( year 2000). If you want OSS then just go and get it the same as you would for a linux distro. Try out pkg-get from blastwave - it's very good. The reason why Sun seems archaic in some areas is backward compatability. You would be surprised how many people still rely on sh etc.
Yeah, I know how you feel. I work for I'BEE'M. We have to work 20 hour days for a pittance. It's a hard day as well. Teaching monkeys to play table tennis can be frustrating at times. They also make dogs smoke for our pleasure. At least they are not interested in making money.
It's not actually even at Beta yet.
This is insightful and should be modded up.
1) Not true. 2) Not true. 3) Fair point. 4) They had a lot of cash on hand BEFORE *selling out to Redmond. * In this case means accepting damages and compensation from Microsoft in order to satisfy patent litigation issues.
Great post. This also applies to anyone who thinks tpc-c has any meaning.
This is one of the first sane posts I have ever seen on slashdot. 7 thumbs up!
Actually AIX 5.3L (required for advanced features of p50 = few commercial applications available.
@jeif1k You do realize that whole fucking point of Niagara is to address the problems you talk about when discussing CPU and memory? Niagara is a single die, 8 cores each capable of running 4 threads simultaneously. Sun have realized that core performance is far outstripping memory subystem performance. Just look at itanium. Niagara hides memory latency (stalls) by scheduling different threads (1 cycle latency to context switch). Individual thread performance will suck, particularly in Niagara1. However, throughput of massively multithreaded workloads (webservers etc.) will be impressive. Particularly as these will be in 1U and 2U rack systems. Sun are really starting to turn the corner now.
I think the 1U system in question is the v20Z (opteron) or USIIIi based. POWER5 is a superior CORE to the UltrasparcIV, there is no doubt about that. However, if you look at systemic performance Sun does pretty well (SAP, STREAM etc.). Most people running Oracle don't really care about SPECfp performance really. Suns value is investment protection (retaining the same chassis, just upgrade the uniboards - you can even have different cpus and speeds in the same chassis) and Solaris 10. UltrasparcIV+ still probably won't be as fast per core as P5 but I expect in systemic benchmarks that Sun will do pretty well.
It depends what your TCO estimates for an installation are. Typically, your buying costs aren't the signifcant part of fielding a solution. You need to look at how much it is going to cost to run (power/heat/real estate/maintenance) and how it costs you when it ain't running. Also, just throwing this out there as I don't have any specs to hand, does anyone know if commodity hardware is accurate enough (i.e IEEE FP precision etc.) to be used in all cases a 'super computer' (sic) is used?.
Hmmm. I would say also that first byte latency is also very important in a lot of/most workloads. Clusters can mask this on some workloads through parallelization. Introduce interdependencies and it loses some of it's advantages. I know I will get flamed for this but I think Sun understands this quite well hence the philosophy behind throughput computing and their next gen core designs (Niagara, Niagara2, Rock)