Sun May Use Opteron Chips 237
Runnin_Rob writes "CNET Nets.com is reporting that Sun is likely (not definite, but likely) to start using AMD's Opteron in the near future. The article also discusses how Linux is pushing for greater acceptability of Solaris x86 because 'All of the sudden it is OK to (put) something other than Windows.'"
opteron form factor (Score:4, Informative)
It's great that Sun and AMD are together on this, but I'm itching to build a box myself
Re:opteron form factor (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:opteron form factor (Score:2, Funny)
Tune in next week to find out. Same Bat time. Same Bat channel!
Re:opteron form factor (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't care about these low-end boxes very much -- the profits are low. But, it helps to have a nice full range of machines available to keep their customers from going the commodity-server (read: crap) route just to get a wimpy box to run their intranet or some non-critical app.
Re:opteron form factor (Score:3, Informative)
Intel-chips aren't really any cooler than AMD-chips.
not exactly what I heard on their briefing... (Score:4, Informative)
So, expect AMD CPUs in blade configurations but not in servers, the SPARC arch is still going strong in SUNs business model (dont remember any AMD cpu's in any server models actually).
Re:opteron form factor (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:opteron form factor (Score:3, Informative)
Re:opteron form factor (Score:2)
Also, again already said, that the inital boards will be released without an AGP. But your server won't care really. In fact, that's just less code to worry about.
The 8-way Opteron boards will not be available until Q4.
Re:opteron form factor (Score:2)
Solaris Vs. Mickeysoft. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have always had the mind that if I had to choose between the two, I'd rather have a monopoly that was Unix-based.
Re:Solaris Vs. Mickeysoft. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Solaris Vs. Mickeysoft. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sun has yet to let anyone besides Sun itself have any say over Java.
Who is being more open?
Sun Java openness = Java Community Process (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Sun works with a wide range of developers and companies
to improve Java using the Java Community Process [jcp.org]
The JCP has hundreds of members listed here [jcp.org]
I personally believe the JCP does an admirable job.
Does it have room for improvement? Of course.
Is it working? For me the answer is yes--
Java gets steadily faster and more useful.
What do you think is a better model
for extending and improving a language?
Cheers, Joel
From th
Re:Solaris Vs. Mickeysoft. (Score:2)
Re:Solaris Vs. Mickeysoft. (Score:3, Informative)
Sun. Any day of the week, any week of the year, and any year of the millenium.
SPARC, copyright SPARC International, Inc. Licenses $99.
Java, licensed by none other than Sun's biggest competitors: IBM, BEA, Microsoft (historically). Even GCC compiles Java source code and has some of the APIs implemented.
There's also OpenOffice.org (the significance of OpenOffice.org is only beginning to show itself), NFS (interoperability), System V/BSD/POSIX (again, interoperability), and membe
Re:Solaris Vs. Mickeysoft. (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe... (Score:2)
Ok, ok, I give, I screwed up. Please be gentle.
Re:Or maybe... (Score:4, Funny)
I meant to say that Solaris wants to be Windows.
That's easy to do. Just use a Sparc with dodgy l2 cache.
Re:Or maybe... (Score:2)
Cheers, Joel
hey, don't anthropomorphize computers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Solaris Vs. Mickeysoft. (Score:2)
Is that why they have an open hardware spec (sparc.org) that allows competitors (fujitsu) to seriously go head to head with them?
Not likely (Score:2)
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Informative)
there are already plenty of dual Itanium 'stations available for $10k and up.
I bet AMD will undercut Intel's price for 64bit CPU by a lot.
Re:Not likely (Score:2, Informative)
One word: HyperTransport (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps Sun feels sufficiently compelled by Hypertransport's effectiveness in producing powerful multiprocessor systems easily and cost-effectively. Three HyperTransport buses per Opteron, use one to interface to the system bus and the other two to interconnect with other processors. No other processor has HyperTransports like this, specifically optimized for multiprocessor configurations.
Typo. (Score:2, Funny)
interest/disinterest (Score:2, Insightful)
Another way of saying that interest in the SPARC architecture is waning.
Gas clouds... Sun... Opteron chips (Score:3, Funny)
Took half a second for me to realise they don't quite run THAT hot.
Re:Gas clouds... Sun... Opteron chips (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Gas clouds... Sun... Opteron chips (Score:2)
Re:Gas clouds... Sun... Opteron chips (Score:2)
Now THAT'S a Beowulf cluster!
SB
sounds concrete (Score:4, Funny)
Re:sounds concrete (Score:3, Interesting)
The upcoming round of x86 servers that John Loiacano alludes to, which by the definition of "near future" are coming out in the "extremely near future", are definitely not going to be based on the Opteron. It has already been leaked that the servers will be Intel Xeon processors running at least 2.8Ghz speeds.
Jus
Re:sounds concrete (Score:2)
This appears to be true. For example, their UltraSPARC IIIi "just around the corner" press release was dated October, 2001.
It seems that the "less enlightened" folks out there stomp all over Sun for doing this and, then, take for granted that their server room seems to never cry for attention. Their hardware tends to be unusually durable, too, as I still see SPARCstatio
Linux helping Solaris? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not at my workplace. We're mostly a Solaris shop, but it's not buying us much. We have to load new boxen chock full of GNU software to make them comfortable to work on.
Much of our software is Java, C or Perl-based. The Solaris JavaVM sucks donkey dicks (it's no better than linux, anyway), we use GCC (not Forte), and our Perl is portable to linux with a single scp.
Solaris buys us performance on machines with more than 16 CPUs. But we don't have any! Anything that needs serious cycles goes on the S/390 or AS/400s.
When the leases come up, it will be interesting to see how many Solaris boxes go out, and linux boxes come in.
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:5, Interesting)
Either the apps you've deployed on those machines are more I/O hungry than CPU hungry, or you've wasted dollars on mismatched architecture. S/390 and zSeries (no comment on AS/400 since I don't really know that one) are great machines if you need absolute up time and fantastic I/O throughput. But for CPU power, while those machine do have some, they are not giving you the bang for the buck you can get with a farm of P4s or AMDs. So maybe the reason you do have those machines is for something other than, or in addition to, CPU power needs. Does your S/390 serve web pages? Is it running a database? Does it have a PCICA?
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like I said, I've got nothing against Sun. I like working with their hardware. But when my boss asks me 'how much will it cost?', Sun leaves me in a real bad spot. Now they've realized how much they've priced themselves out of markets like ours, and they're working on putting out reasonably-priced systems these days with things like this amd deal or by using standard-registered dimms that you can buy from third parties on the cheap. But it's too late, I think. We started migrating away from Sun a while back, and we're not going to swap vendors again now.
The bottom line is this: What is Sun going to offer me in the linux/x86 world that Dell (or insert your vendor here) isn't? Better support? Lower prices? Better hardware integration? Sorry, we've got all of that. Our core applications will continue to run on Sun hardware for the forseeable future, but the low/mid-range stuff is already long down the road of x86 and linux, and Sun was just way too late to the game.
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:3, Interesting)
The OS is cleaner, the speed better (especially when you push the system, using close to max RAM, because the FreeBSD swapping alg. is smarter than Linux), and the ports and upgrading systems make the systems much easier to maintain.
Finally, FreeBSD has much better system documentation (manpages for EVERYTHING), and all of those 'linux only' applications can run (quite quickly) under emulation (even NVidia is finally catching up, with their binary drivers).
(I gues
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:2)
I'm afraid not, as you have done nothing to earn the title. Until you can come up with broad, unsubstantiated or entirely subjective claims for why FreeBSD is the best OS in history (and probably the future too), you can't possibly equal the awesome illogicality of a true Linux fanboy.
Aside from that, various silly statements (such as Fr33B5D r0x0rz d00dz!!!) must be made in a timely fashion to counter intelligent and thoughtout analysis of its shor
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:2)
FreeBSD is really quite clean, quite simple, and I'm continually impressed with how elegant it is. Realistically, Free/OpenBSD share a lot of the ports infrastructure, and I have had better luck with the make world sequence on FreeBSD than on OpenBS
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:2)
"default security" as you put it, is simply what they claim for a headline, since there's no other fair benchmark of security.
In reality, OpenBSD comes with systrace, so you can specifically limit the privlidges that a program has, down to the bare essentials of what it needs. In other words, even if an exploit in NTPD is found, someone could
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:2)
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:2)
Umm, why? Have you even tried the version of KSH in OpenBSD, or some other version that just happens to have the same name?
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:2)
Solaris buys us performance on machines with more than 16 CPUs. But we don't have any!
Therein lies your problem. Forte, now Sun One Studio 7, is less than $1,000, and is a much better compiler for SPARC than GCC. It can target your specific type of CPU, if you want. IMO, using anything other than Sun's compiler on Sun's hardware is irresponsible. You can still use gmake and the other GNU tools (no lock-in required!), but just change those CC and CFLAGS variables to use c
Re:Linux helping Solaris? (Score:2)
As for the JVM, yes it sucks, the linux one sucks too... seeing how hard sun push java you`d exp
Dumb statement (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya, I guess all these guys that finally quit CompUSA and get real tech jobs are seeing a whole new world. Honestly, did they think the entire world was living with the same misconception?
Im not going to go MS bashing, because quite honestly Im pro-MS, but really, thats a truly stupid statement to make, especially if you have worked in real data centers.
Re:Dumb statement (Score:3, Informative)
The point that the quote should be making is that it is possible to purchase servers on the x86 platform with an alternative OS installed, not a preinstalled Windows. That's what it seems like, I don't think it's an outright MS bashing, just the fact that Sun is part of the alternative x86 movement.
Re:Dumb statement (Score:2)
Re:Dumb statement (Score:2)
Just goes to show that context is everything, hunh?
Soko
Why the hell... (Score:2)
Im not going to go MS bashing, because quite honestly Im pro-MS, but really, thats a truly stupid statement to make, especially if you have worked in real data centers.
Why do I read Slashdot? Why bother? What is the point? This gets +5?
I don't even know what the hell that guy is saying.
-B
Smelling the coffee? (Score:5, Insightful)
Many pointy hairs are also awakening to the fact that Linux is evolving way faster then any previous OS in history. This realization is forcing many of them to position themselves in order to benefit from Linux. They are starting by replacing all of their low to medium-level extremely expensive UNIX solutions with Linux implementations, and waiting for Linux to overtake UNIX on the top tier. This saves them tons "in the meantime" and prepares them for the eventual replacement of their high-end solutions. Sun has to know that this scenario is inevitable and play along. Pride will only get you but so far.
McNealy has been fighting Linux for far too long, calling it "just another tool". I got news for you, all OS's are tools. Only this tool here can save your ass a ton while doing everything that every other tool promises to do on the low and medium ends.
Right now, Linux is "it" - and it shows no signs of slowing up. Microsoft makes their money off desktops and their office suite. UNIX makes money off stability and power. Stability and power is what the open source developers aim to improve. UNIX beware - evolve or perish, because you're next..
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:2, Insightful)
See thats the thing. Everything is just another tool to get the job done. Linux never has and never will be the best solution for everything. This is something Linux fanboys just don't get.
Here is news for you. In some occasions, Windows is the best tool
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:2)
Better drink your coffee before it gets cold.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider IBM. Sure, IBM is selling hardware with Linux loaded on it. But they haven't given up on their Power chips as you seem to imply that Sun should its Sparc series. Why aren't you wagging your tongue at IBM for that? And AIX? What of that? IBM certainly hasn't abandonded it, and I wouldn't expect it to any time soon. So all that IBM is really offering is yet another operating system choice, in this case Linux, and it meets your approval. It doesn't necessarily do anything unique there.
And what of HP? You say that HP has proven that they can sell Linux servers in the absence of huge corporate support. What on earth are you talking about? HP is one of the largest computer companies on the planet. If they can't make a go of selling Linux boxes, who can? I will also point out that HP hasn't dumped RISC for X86, but instead went to expensive Itanium, and has a long roadmap for HP/UX. Sure they will sell you a Linux box, but they would prefer to sell you something else.
You assert that Linux is evolving way faster then any previous OS in history. The only reason that is possible is because it has had so far to go to catch up. To catch up it has generally traveled trails blazed by others, and relied upon the kindness of volunteers and donations from kinfolk (JFS,XFS,etc.). Sure Linux is causing the traditional Unix vendors to react and jump a bit.... just like BSD did to AT&T Unix, GNU did to Unix, the various Unix groups and companies did to each other over time. But big unix companies are still here and adapting.
Cost? I've got Sun equipment that cheaper than my Dells, and suits my particular needs better. Cost/performance? Depending upon the day and the metric you've got a better argument. But it doesn't matter how cheap it is, or what the price/performance is if it doesn't cut the mustard. PC and linux aren't even close to being a universal solution. Check back in 3 years after Opteron is well entrenched, Linux gets some more time in the rock polisher, and companies have figured out which direction Linux on X86 is heading: Intel vs AMD. Till then, confusion reigns.
I also wouldn't count on Linux staying cheap. All of the major Linux commercial vendors are putting plans into place or releasing enterprise or professional releases that are both much more expensive, and have a much lower change rate. What else do you expect? Linux companies have been going broke left and right for years, and only a few now are starting to make a profit. There have to be profitable Linux vendors if linux is going to be a commercial success, and that means money, lots more money. And that money will come from their customers for license and support costs. I pay less for Sun support than what is in my budget for Red Hat support. It will be interesting to watch what happens to the Linux marketplace once that becomes more common.
The change rate for commercial linux is starting to drop for the professional releases. This has to happen since if you need something reliable that you are going to bet your business on, you can't afford the overhead of the constant release churning that has marked the Linux world to date. Testing, certification, and quality assurance take time. I wonder how that will effect Linux in the marketplace?
Its kind of ironic, but many of the things that you list as big advantages for Linux are really disadvantages to those with deep pockets. Rapid change is bad. Cheap is irrelevant. Almost as stable isn't stable. Those cost of the application, its implementation and maintenance is king. But the Linux commercial marketplace is heading toward those opportunities. I wonder what the outcome will be?
Linux
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:2)
Jesus Tapdancing Christ. WHY do people keep insisting that Sun hardware is really that epxpensive???
We got a Quad-processor 4x300Mhz 64 bit Ultra Sparc II machine, with 1 GB of ram, ethernet controller and scsi
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:2)
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:2)
Going with a RedHat 7.3 and 36GB scsi makes that $2,577.00 USD.
From the first look it might be that the sun is indeed a little bit cheaper (because of 64bit PCI and 4x GbEthernet and the proc), but it doesn't mean that the IBM hasn't a better price/performance ratio for many *applications* (because of the faster CPU and OS for this configuration). OTOH IBM isn't known as the cheap
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:2)
evolve or perish, because you're next..
The chips are evolving, as described in the Marc Tremblay interview [aceshardware.com] at Ace's Hardware. [aceshardware.com]
The part that makes me happy is the idea of running other threads when one blocks on a memory fetch: my own experiments (with Samba and smbclient) in a benchmark show 80% of the time I'm waiting for a cache update from main memory, 20% of the time I'm making progress.
Being able to run a different thread until it blocks, then another and so on is a go
Spewing the coffee? (Score:2)
> and HP has proven that
> they can sell Linux servers in the absence of huge
> corporate support.
HP *is* a huge corporation. Besides, most companies I know of buy Linux servers from *Dell*.
> Many pointy hairs are also awakening to the fact
> that Linux is evolving way faster then any
> previous OS in history.
WTF?! Linux has been "evolving" since at least 1994, probably longer. And even then, 60-70% of
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:2)
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got the wrong idea about what a high end server is. Solaris scales better to 64 processors and above than Linux does, which is partly why Linux creams it at the lower end.
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have little concept of what large systems really do. x86 boxes do not have the i/o for huge databases or HPC apps. What most linux kids never run into is real starvation of their procs. What until you NEED datasets (in memory) in the range of >100GB. What x86 box do you kno
Re:Smelling the coffee? (Score:2)
The scenarios where a Sun would be better are getting fewer and fewer. People used to have Sun workstations, but I daresay that's gone. Sun dept servers? Forget it. Sun supercomputers? Nah. Sun mainframes? No. Sun huge DB servers? OK, but if Sun doesn't swallow Opteron, Opteron could swallow them.
So Sun is not in an enviable spot.
Hope it goes better then their Itanium rollout (Score:2)
Now obviously Itanium has been a total disaster, so its understandable and nearly respectable that Sun would backpedal, nonetheless their ability to follow through on platform decisions like this is just another question mark for a company that has too many.
I thought Sun already had a 64-bit CPU (Score:2)
I thought Sun already had a 64-bit CPU. And I heard that CPU won't run Windows. Since Sun wants businesses to buy Solaris instead of Windows, that would seem like the thing to do, since that would narrow down the competition to basically just Linux. Do they think Microsoft isn't going to sell Windows for these CPUs?
Personally I'd love to have a CPU architecture that fully departs from the x86 designs, whether it be 32 bit or 64 bit (or a hybrid). I'd just run Linux or BSD on it. Such CPUs exist now, b
Re:I thought Sun already had a 64-bit CPU (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you ever heard of these machines called...ahh...what was it...ummm... APPLE!? [apple.com]
Seriously though, OSX is already a *nix, and from what I understand you can run a number of flavours of Linux ( Yellow Dog is one... [yellowdoglinux.com]) in/under/over/though OSX which means you can still do things like use the dvd reader/burner and use the firewire port etc, etc. If you're not with in Apple's price market, yo
Re:I thought Sun already had a 64-bit CPU (Score:2)
They do. It's called an UltraSPARC.
And I heard that CPU won't run Windows
Right again, but who cares about Windoze on a Sun box -- and where's this going?
Since Sun wants businesses to buy Solaris instead of Windows, that would seem like the thing to do, since that would narrow down the competition to basically just Linux.
Huh? Antecedent clarification please. Putting Windows on Sun boxen will help Sun, how? And they should do this by . . . stealing the
Re:I thought Sun already had a 64-bit CPU (Score:2)
You thought that Sun already had a 64 bit CPU? Dude, its been out for years.
And you heard that it won't run Windows? Why would you want to?
Sun wants business to buy Solaris? They give it away for free, so that you buy their hardware.
Next time, try and be at least a LITTLE informed about what you're posting, and the computing industry in general.
This would (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that so many companies: Sun, IBM, Dell want to increase their 64 bit x86 offerings, Microsoft *will* have to work double time to speed up their version of 64 bit Windows.
Already 5 varities of Linux, 3 BSD's, IBM's DB2, CA Ingres and Oracle have confirmed firm support for Opteron. Delaying Windows for this segment will mean that as Opteron becomes popular in the coming months, Linux will become the dominant operating system. This will mean a further boost to Linux.
A few months back Sandia National labs signed up to put 10,000 Opteron's in a supercomputer named Red storm which is supposed to become operational in 2004.
Re:This would (Score:2)
No, sun is against linux, no distros any more ? Linux is for weenies
Sun going to intel/AMD on blades
Maybe
Sun to support Itanium
No , not really, atleast not now
Sun to use java as OS
No, not yet.Not stable enuff
Will someebody tell me after sun has made up their minds?
Excerpt from a future Sun vs PC flamewar: (Score:4, Funny)
*Not counting the times a careless sysadmin knocked the heatsink off of a CPU and fried the chip. We've been told that they are working on more foolproof mounting clips.
**As long as you avoid the E25Ks with the Soyo Super 733FX3 mobos with the Via 8N933A eXtreeme chipsets. Those sux. Flakey as all shit. Oh, and make sure you only buy brand-name memory.
***The winning benchmarks were done using a system with custom aftermarket watercoolers running Opteron 4700++'s overclocked to 6974++. The transaction data was not completely free of corrupted bytes.
Re:Excerpt from a future Sun vs PC flamewar: (Score:2)
I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe somebody more familiar with the architecture can chime in here...?
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Informative)
Mabye HyperTransport is just *that* good.
Re:I wonder... (Score:2)
They're not. Sun will probably use Opterons in their x86 servers, but there's no way they'll drop SPARC.
Re:I wonder... (Score:2)
AMD's Opteron's scale to 8-way SPM on their own, and AMD's Hypertransport gives them a lot more interconnect bandwidth than Sun's FirePlane.
That's not to say that anyone WILL build a system with 106 Opteron chips, but these chips could, theoretically, scale better than UltraSparc chips do. If someone where to design a system to get all of the chips working together and than get an operat
I've been following the opteron's and.. (Score:4, Interesting)
w00t for AMD!
Solaris 9, the best Unix of 1995 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Solaris 9, the best Unix of 1995 (Score:3, Informative)
It will let you install/remove anything you want. You're supposed to have a clue. Some people want/need to remove a critical component and replace it with their own flavor. Sorry it didn't work out for you, but it's really better for you that it didn't, apparently.
The Sun gnome is still beta. Not supported, not tested, not done. Hang tight. Sun doesn't
Re:Solaris 9, the best Unix of 1995 (Score:2)
Re:Solaris 9, the best Unix of 1995 (Score:5, Informative)
Stuff like that is detailed in a valuable 'short cut' document from Sun, the wonderful Solaris 80/20 Guide [sun.com], officially 'Solaris OE Guide for New System Administrators: The 20% of Solaris knowledge that solves 80% of your needs'.
If there is any chance of you ever wanting to explore Solaris, download and archive this document now . It's a real hassle, I just found out, to locate it on the docs.sun website, so bookmark this. It's one hell of a good cribsheet.
Re:Solaris 9, the best Unix of 1995 (Score:2)
That's fine except Solaris DVDs have everything on one disk - booting it leaves you stuck in Webstart. (That's after you update the DVD drive firmware to let you boot - an interesting, but not impossible, proposition with a new server and no OS installed to flash from...) I suspect there's a way around this by supplying the boot file as an argument, but I was in a hurry and revert
Re:Solaris 9, the best Unix of 1995 (Score:2)
So will any linux-distribution. The only difference is that the system is trying to help you. I fail to see how this can be constructed to be negative.
rpm -e glibc
...
...
Removing glibc would break dependencies for the following packages:
r
Re:Solaris 9, the best Unix of 1995 (Score:2)
Really, how difficult is this? I can't believe this guy got modded up. This is as bad as those guys that do reviews of RedHat and say they
Good thing for Sun (Score:2, Interesting)
Long before Sun evaluated the first AMD chip for blade, I was thinking this would be a good idea for them. Regardless of many things, prices is just the tipping point. Using AMD, Sun does not have to put too much effort developing chips. AMD and Intel has quicker CPU cyle because of the Desktop root. This makes Sun's offer more competitive in term of price, publicity, and performance (at whatever cost they charge).
I am surpised that people compares Sparcs, and AMD (interm of its vitality), while they d
Who is this "Linux"? (Score:2)
Who is this mysterious "Linux"? I know of the OS kernel called Linux, but last I checked, it wasn't concerned about the marketplace for non-Windows OS's, it just worried about scheduling processes and providing abstracted interfaces to hardware.
Does the latest kernel print subliminal messages at boot time, saying "Delete me! Install Solaris for x86!!!"?
SPARCling whites (Score:2, Funny)
USIIIi finally available (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-IIIi/ [sun.com]
They do have some similarities to AMD's opteron processor:
- 1 MB on-chip L2 cache
- integrated memory controller
- 128bit DDR Ram
- large L1 cache
It should be interesting to compare those two processors.
Re:Nice journalism here once again... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Nice journalism here once again... (Score:2)
Actually, that line was quoted verbatim from the article. Removed from context, yes, but verbatim nonetheless.
Now, I'd have to gripe about Mr. Tolliver's flagrant mis-use of the popular idiom "All of a sudden.", but hey; the English language will go downhill with or without me kicking and screaming, so I'll just sit here and fester
Re:Nice journalism here once again... (Score:2)
While I forget the literary term for it, that was a perfectly normal 'correction' to make. Tolliver was likely already talking about something, and when extracting that sound-bite from his line of thought the author had to substitute "put" for a possibly long, detailed line that would probably digress from the point at hand.
However, that wasn't what Luminair was talking about. He indicated that the article submitter and Timothy (the Slas
Re:windows 64 (Score:2, Informative)
======
do you have any facts supporting your claims about microsoft dissing AMD?
I am seeing quite the opposite picture. Windows is running on AMD64 already
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8678
sea/saw (Score:3, Informative)
Re:sun needs to drop sparc (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, really? Who'd you ask to learn this erroneous fact? Maybe your office uber geek or whoever fed you this line of crap can fix your mouse driver, but apparently he's a bit behind on the industry. You (or whoever you're parroting) obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
The latest research showed a surge in Sun's market share between the last quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002.
(http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17758.html)
The overall Unix server market grew 11 percent, from $5.9 billion in the first quarter of 1999 to $6.6 billion in the same period in 2000, according to research firm International Data Corp. Of that, Sun kept the top spot, increasing its share from 28 percent to 32 percent, with revenue of $2.1 billion in the first quarter of 2000.
(http://news.com.com/2100-1001-242350.html?legacy
Oh, maybe you meant internationally -- no wait, that doesn't work either:
Sun Microsystems has increased its market share in the RISC/UNIX server market in India in Q1 2002, according to IDC. Sun's RISC/UNIX server revenue market share in India grew to 48.4% in Q1 of 2002 from the 34.6% achieved in the full year 2001.
(http://www.ciol.com/content/news/repts/102070105
Before you try to complain about the dates, show me more recent data. (I have some, and it's even better for Sun that what you can find on the web right now, but I can't share my Peddie report legally -- go buy your own : http://www.jonpeddie.com/index.shtml ).
Better yet, try to explain to me what Sun does and exactly which market share they are interested in. Knowing the SPARC acronym is a simple google click away -- that demonstrates nothing, but I guess it is getting you a bit of karma; no respect from the clueful, though.
It says a lot when you take the top of the line sparc chip, and put it up against a chip a quarter of the price that kicks its butt.
I'm sorry, what machine kicks a Sun SPARC's butt in the apps they give a damn about? I don't think Sun cares if your Intel box gets more fps in Quake3 than a SPARC. You do realize Sun's are 64-bit machines, right? Do you know what that means? Or why so many corporations with deep pockets care? No, you don't. When's the last time this phantom butt-kicking CPU worked on 16GB of RAM or more?
not every case calls for a 24 cpu machine
And not every garage calls for (or can afford) a Ferrari. Duh. But the really profitable ones do. DO you have any idea what the difference in profit between a 1-CPU (or 2!) server and an enterprise server? No, of course you don't.
Get a clue or STFU.
Re:sun needs to drop sparc (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, what machine kicks a Sun SPARC's butt in the apps they give a damn about? I don't think Sun cares if your Intel box gets more fps in Quake3 than a SPARC.
When it comes to raw number crunching, SPARC chips are terrible. They can now manage to beat PIIIs most of the time, and even the newer Celerons sometimes, but they're well behind the latest AthlonXP or P4 in terms of processing performance.
However, what Sun does have is great software support, great supporting hardware that gives their p
Re:sun needs to drop sparc (Score:2)
Re:sun needs to drop sparc (Score:2, Informative)
Ok I Did.
http://news.com.com/2100-1010-990662.html
F ebruary 2003 (1 year newer than your more recent article)
HP and IBM each had a market share of 30 percent, or $1.5 billion in revenue, of the $5 billion
Re:sun needs to drop sparc (Score:3, Interesting)
Thats not that suprising, since Itanium is explicitly designed to be backwards compatible with PA-RISC. From the initial drawing on napkins in bars, Itanium was to replace PA-RISC and run HP-UX. They helped design the chips. Itanium II is more HP than Intel design from what I remember. HP actually had 64 bit design experience with PA-RISC and it shows in Itanium II. Carly Fiorina's plan saw R & D as a cost, not an investment, and has essentially killed all R
Re:"May" (Score:2)
How's this for a post?