http://www.osnews.com/story/17032/Sun_Intel_Announce_New_Partnership Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:48:19 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?204649 http://osnews.com/thread?204649 ... really interesting. Intel has been putting out some good chips lately, and they're only going to get better. The one area they are lacking (which really impacts servers much more than workstations) is in bus-bandwidth.

AMD really one-upped Intel in this area with Hypertransport/on-die memory controllers, hopefully Intel will come out with something to match. It's always been Sun's position to market overall throughput, and Intel systems have a "sore thumb" so-to-speak in this area.

The CPUs are killer though, I've got a couple core/core2 systems and they are *great*. Very stable, very fast, and don't draw much power.

The upcoming year looks pretty interesting!

(PS - Anybody gotten the webcast to play? I hate Real, all I got was a Sun logo / Intel logo on the page this morning, maybe now it's working? Time to go check...) Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ormandj) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204675 http://osnews.com/thread?204675 So Sun will discontinue Opteron servers now?

.V Tue, 23 Jan 2007 00:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netsql) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204680 http://osnews.com/thread?204680 We have been trying to standardize on CPU architecture for our x86 machines at work, using HP DL385/DL585's and we have been happy with the performance we are getting out of the machines. If we chose to purchase Sun x86 hardware, we would have chosen it in part because of the Opteron processor. The V20z's we have work well enough and are for the most part trouble free.

I just hope that this does not come to bite Sun in the ass, just as people are "getting on board" with Sun, they change processor vendors. Tue, 23 Jan 2007 00:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Robert Escue) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204686 http://osnews.com/thread?204686 At no time has Sun said they will drop AMD.

From my reading of the announcement (not speaking for my employer), we will continue to source from both.

Tp. Tue, 23 Jan 2007 01:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tpenta) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204698 http://osnews.com/thread?204698 I just hope that this does not come to bite Sun in the ass, just as people are "getting on board" with Sun, they change processor vendors.

Except they aren't changing, they're *adding*. Jonathan made it very clear during the presentation that this would sit "right beside" their AMD line. Tue, 23 Jan 2007 01:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204730 http://osnews.com/thread?204730 So... now the big three UNIX systems vendors (IBM, HP, Sun) are all onboard with the two-party system in x86-land. You can interpret this as a historical milestone for the not-so-little instruction set architecture that could. He's moving up in the world. Just look at those sexy backplane interconnects and cool marketecture. That's not a PC. That's a BladeCenter. Wow. Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204768 http://osnews.com/thread?204768 Ìf I were Steve Ballmer, I would be sweating. Anyone else, feel free to applaud. This is good for everyone (except Microsoft). Tue, 23 Jan 2007 05:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (twenex) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204785 http://osnews.com/thread?204785 No, it says it will sell them both.
I believe this is a great announcement. Having the name Intel there is a very good thing for Sun and will get people interested in Solaris, which will translate into better hardware compatiblitiy, which has always been Solaris' biggest drawback. Tue, 23 Jan 2007 06:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lopisaur) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204794 http://osnews.com/thread?204794 Why, you can run windows on sun blades and sun servers as well. SUN even SUPPORTS windows running on their servers.


I prefer to se solaris run on sun hardware, but that does not change the fact that windows can be run. Tue, 23 Jan 2007 07:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (riha) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204796 http://osnews.com/thread?204796 Of course you can. However, that's not why they should be worried.

The reason they should be worried is this: For 20 years, Microsoft have said "We're the only BASIC interpreter/OS/word processor/office suite/internet browser company you'll EVER need!", and generally speaking, people have believed them. So they have 90% of the desktop market, and an unfathomably large chunk of the server market, too.

But now, people are starting to look and think, "Erm, no you're not." And so the only way they can go is down.

Even worse for them, despite the proliferation of other OS vendors, all the other contenders either are a Unix (Solaris, *BSD), look like it (Linux), or can run Unix software in some fashion (MacOS X, which is built on Unix but runs a proprietary GUI). Even if Microsoft go all out promoting "Services for Unix", a Windows installation that only runs Unix software is a Windows than can be replaced with a Unix. Tue, 23 Jan 2007 07:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (twenex) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204797 http://osnews.com/thread?204797 [unintentional duplicate post deleted]Edited 2007-01-23 07:29 Tue, 23 Jan 2007 07:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (twenex) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204833 http://osnews.com/thread?204833 The one area they are lacking (which really impacts servers much more than workstations) is in bus-bandwidth.

And how exact the bus bandwith impacts Core2-based servers performance? Care to provide any numbers? Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stare) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?204862 http://osnews.com/thread?204862 Depends on the work that needs to be done, and whether the bandwidth issues can be hidden by having a very large cache.

With that being said, CSI is apparently going to be introduced along with some other nifty features to address the said bandwidth issues. Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments