“Sun Microsystems will use processors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in future blade servers that it first announced on Feb. 10. Sun will use Athlon XP-M processors, originally developed for mobile computing, running at 1.2GHz or 1.4GHz.” Read more at InfoWorld.
This is a very sad day. Now even SUN have become a part of Wintel.
Of course unless this turns out to be one of their short PC flirts, as with the Sun 386i series in the eighties.
Let’s all hope so.
There are Blades for SPARC, SPARC is NOT going away. AFAIK, these are other Blade models, which are meant to be cheaper.
So I guess this looks like x86 solaris is very much alive and kicking, or are this going to be running Sun’s linkux distro?
Also they mention the boxes being able to support 16 AMD cpus. Are they talking SMP here? I thought you could only do dual with the athlons. Or do they have a much more fun capability then currently avalible?
Or does solaris or whatever the run on it use them in some sort of cluster?
I tried submitting this to OSNews yesterday but I guess it didn’t make the cut. Here it is again…
Sun Ships Industry’s First Multi-Architecture Blade Platform
http://www.supercomputingonline.com/article.php?sid=3155
I thought Athlon’s bus technology were based on the Alpha EV7 bus technology? If I’m correct, and providing the appropriate chipset(s), should allow hundreds of CPU’s in a single system, quite happily…
BTW, what’s wrong with the VIA C3’s for this type of work (except for the utter crap FPU that they have)… They definately run cool with 15W at 1GHz…
“Also they mention the boxes being able to support 16 AMD cpus. Are they talking SMP here?”
This is referring to a chassis for the blades:
“Sun wanted the Sun Fire B1600 chassis, which holds up to 16 AMD or Sparc blades, to consume less than 1,000 watts.”
It’s saying the chassis holds up to 16 blades.
Guessing from their 16 blades -> 1000 watts figure I would guess that each blade will be two way.
The heat dissipation off of these things must be abominable. You really have to wonder about the TCO of x86 in situations such as this.
1. it’s AMD (can’t you read) not intel
2. it’s not windows, it’s rebranded redhat linux (have you not read about sun’s linux push? or about linuxes gains in new server shipments?)
3. they still have sparc, it’s not going away.
so basically:
sun is in it’s death throes, and all you can do is critisize???
sun is trying to find SOME WAY to survive and make money, because very few are buying expensive big iron any more.
it’s people like you who are probably responsible for suns current problems.
instead of seeing the handwriting on the wall early on and making appropriate changes, people like you scoffed at everyone’s ideas for change, including increasing price performance…but noooooo
just for that comment, iggy, i hope sun bites the dust. and you can pat yourself on the back for being a contributor to their demise.
Amen!
sun being part of the wintel what?!
first, they are not running windows, and they are AMD, not intel. There is a difference.
is this not the sign that sun is doomed? sun is giving up on SPARC and Solaris! they’re computers are no better than the ones from Penguin Computing! why would anyone buy linux system from sun when they could buy one much much cheaper elsewhere. it’s not like it’s going to be more reliable.
cringely is right, sun is going to die. they are losing $2bil/yr and they only have like $10bil in assets! in 5 years sun will have exhausted their money and they will be dead.
I hate to break it to you guys, but AMD have been a second-source Intel supplier since the mid-seventies. They both run the same code.
1. it’s AMD (can’t you read) not intel
Oh, please. Who would buy an AMD processor if they didn’t run Intel code?
2. it’s not windows, it’s rebranded redhat linux (have you not read about sun’s linux push? or about linuxes gains in new server shipments?)
What’s the difference, pray tell? It’s Taiwan manufacturing and Finnish OSes. Linux saw birth on the Wintel platform.
3. they still have sparc, it’s not going away.
I’d like to hear that straight from the horse’s mouth. This is SUN we’re talking about. SUN has its own processor, yet they’re introducing a third-party non-SPARC processor.
Thye least they could have done would have been to let AMD take over as their SPARC supplier.
so basically:
sun is in it’s death throes, and all you can do is critisize???
Am I supposed to clap my hands?
A SUN without SPARC and Solaris could just as well be called Red Hat.
sun is trying to find SOME WAY to survive and make money, because very few are buying expensive big iron any more.
Do you know what a Pyrrus victory is?
SUN is expensive big iron, so whether SUN survives by leaving their traditional products behind is open to discussion. While this might mean that there is a SUNW stock even twenty years from now, it could just as well be called DELL.
it’s people like you who are probably responsible for suns current problems.
Yes, I admit to not buying that much (new) SUN hardware recently. OTOH, my budget and interests don’t really allow that. I’m not into running servers or big networks. This has got nothing to do with any antipathies towards SUN, though. They just don’t offer much to household consumers.
instead of seeing the handwriting on the wall early on and making appropriate changes, people like you scoffed at everyone’s ideas for change, including increasing price performance…but noooooo
just for that comment, iggy, i hope sun bites the dust. and you can pat yourself on the back for being a contributor to their demise.
Not any more than anyone else. I’ve never been considered a potential customer by SUN, IBM, DEC or HP, and even if I were, my IT budget would be piss in the SUN ocean.
I’m just worried that they will become but a ghost of SUNs past.
is this not the sign that sun is doomed? sun is giving up on SPARC and Solaris! they’re computers are no better than the ones from Penguin Computing! why would anyone buy linux system from sun when they could buy one much much cheaper elsewhere. it’s not like it’s going to be more reliable.
expect the SUN is software company too (e.g. JAVA)
Well, it will be interesting to see SUN’s opteron stratergy. Ultimately, Itanium is not going to go anywhere until they do something about the lack of IHV and ISV support. Heck, what is so hard about ring fencing $1billion and giving grants to companies to pay for their porting of their code to Itanium?
Itanium was also promoted as not only performing better than RISC chips, but cheaper, where are those results? why are they still charging US$4000 for a frigg’in CPU? Heck, I can get an Alpha one 1/2 the cost.
Now, with that being said, if Deerfield, aka, Itanium III goes according to plan, and they release the sub $1500 CPU; IIRC the pricing is $1300, things may change. What I would like to see is the availability of Motherboards and CPU’s to the developer and workstation community so that obtaining the necessary hardware for development is easier.
that was a on-time writeoff of some aquisitions they did in the past. Otherwise, Sun was profitable for the quarter!
In other words, they actually INREASED their cash holdings.
With all the hype surrounding Linux, it’s easy to forget where much of the real work is carried out.Sun+Solaris+SPARC is one very capable combination, one that cannot be matched by linux within at least a decade (IMHO). There are parts of our world that require the sort of scalability and reliability that Sun systems offer, only matched by AIX, HP-UX and IRIX in particular areas. Over at SGI, IRIX seems to struggling slightly, HP will abandon HP-UX and the Alpha within the next few years and IBM have already demonstrated their intent to push all of their customers onto Linux.
Sun MUST survive this tough period, otherwise the high end 64bit workstation and server market will evaporate. You might say that there are many customers (many of 1,000 employees+ size) who simply cannot get by without 64bit systems. This is true, however, I cannot see any reason why they would not be instructed to wait until IA64 reaches the mainstream in terms of hardware availability and software support.
It has been repeated time and time again, but I truely believe that the Hardware->OS->Software package from one vendor is crucial in many places and serious problems will be caused for many companies who are left to maintain 1,000’s of Lintel machines in clusters that require maintenance through the fragmented software package that any setup of Linux presents. One or two pieces of server iron have time and time again proved their worth.
We need a change of direction and we need one NOW, before its too late. Lintel is not the solution.
Come on Sun, don’t leave us…. We need you!
I’ve been waiting for so long to see OEM to manufacture this type of server using AMD CPU. Intel already got its HP blade, Nexcom already manufactured this type of server from VIA/Cyrix and Crusoe already have RLX.
Gladly, Sun choose AMD. Hopefully this combination will contribute to Sun & AMD survival, also to the better world computing competition and innovation.
MB wrote:
> Sun+Solaris+SPARC is one very capable combination
Yup. I’d even suggest Sun == Solaris + SPARC. It’s their bread-and-butter. This decision to use x86 in Blades reeks of non-technical management attempting to wring out a few more percent profit for their blessed shareholders. Sun engineers must be rolling over in their cubicles.
Hey.. this is your wake up call!
Have any of you really taken a look at Sun’s blade server or their N1 strategy???
Sun’s Blade server is the first multiplatform blade server. Did you know that the resources in the server can be virtualized. You can group multiple blades into one system image or replicate one image across multiple blades. Let me put it more simply.. Sun’s looking to virtualize the provisioning of IT resources!
Let’s say you need to increase the number of web servers for your company.. Normally that would mean that you’d have to buy another system, OS, networking gear, storage.. etc. Not anymore.. just pop in more blades.. goto the GUI console and select the resource you want to copy onto those blades. Click okay.. and it does EVERYTHING! You don’t even have to worry about hostnames.. ip’s.. storage.. the provisioning software does it all for you.
And this is not a pipe dream! It works just as I stated above. Cingular one uses this technology already!!
This is the future for Sun.. provisioning resources dynamicly. It’s not about Solaris or Sparc.. or Linux. You use the best resource type for the task at hand. The blade technology from Sun is based on an open standard. Sun even has plans to support other OS’s and hardware in the blade servers alone. There are tons of OEM’s working on making specialty blades. There are already SSL and load balancing blades from Sun. Did you know that Sun makes the smallest form factor for blade servers and they are the only ones doing provisioning of those blade resources?
This does not mean that Sun will move away from Solaris or Sparc, it just means that Sun will be able to fill in the gaps between PC’s and it’s Sparc/Solaris products.
Who needs that mc monster (130w !!!)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7983
The next logical step for sun is Hammer (aka k8 aka Opteronium).Hmm Big Clusters of Sun Hammers .Sounds nice
Also the ibm suports Hammer …Even HP!! they want it …
“2.9 Why hasn’t OpenVMS been ported to Intel (IA-32) systems?
Why? Business reasons…
There is presently a belief that there would be insufficient market to justify the cost involved in porting OpenVMS to systems using the Intel IA-32 architecture…
But yes, it would be nice to have.
And yes, OpenVMS Engineering is well aware of AMD Opteron/Hammer, too.”
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/wizard/faq/vmsfaq_001.html