Hewlett-Packard delays one Unix server improvement and backs away from another, and Sun Microsystems responds with a promotion to try to lure customers affected by the situation. Read the story at News.com.
Sun Seeks to Gain from HP Stumble
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I will be sad the day HP finally scrap Alpha and T64.
Possibly the most powerfull OS/hardware combination and HP
want to move it onto an inferior Intel platform.
I suppose you could call it “progress” but it feels
bad. It’s not about the best solution, just money.
Someone please buy the rights to T64 & Alpha.
They deserve better!
Since the announcement regarding Tru64 being phased out, quality control has already slipped with several recent patches. One patch kit introduces a problem where filesystems can become corrupted if they exceed 90% full and there is heavy disk IO. There are several other examples of recent Tru64 patches causing more problems than they fix.
It would not suprise me that staff who were not sacked after the merger have been moved to the HPUX porting of various Tru64 components, leaving a skeleton staff of developers to maintain Tru64. This is resulting in a decline on quality assurance in Tru64.
Well I have some news flash for you: Itanium is not intel, but rather HP-Intel, in fack McKinley is a mostly HP product. The IA64 was supposed to be the successor to the PA-RISC, so do not be surprised that they took that route.
TRU64 is supposed to be merged with HP-UX.
Not that I like HP any better, since I think it has all been downhill since Mrs. Fiorina took over.
Then again, this is a clear reminder: Do not let a history major take control of one of the mainstays of the American technology and research industry.
Still it is a sad end for Alpha…. 21364 we hardly knew ye!
“Someone please buy the rights to T64 & Alpha.
They deserve better! ”
I believe Samsung is the other partner in Alpha Processor International (API) which controls part of the Alpha portfolio, I dunno if they will do anything with their chip. Afterall they are the main supplier of Alpha parts.
I believe TRU64 will be OK, they are moving most of the tru-cluster over to HP-UX, I dunno what they may do with the filesystem, HP has a pretty good journaling system already.
They changed the name to be HP _only_ …
We believe our customers want a credible, trusted partner and not one that changes its story frequently. Our customers know that HP is being upfront with them and welcome the frankness and honesty and therefore will stay with us,” Dunlap said.
What a great idea up until this moron openend his mouth. Why would they spew bull crap statements like this? SUN behaves like a spoiled child rather than a trusted professional business partner. They really need to get control of the loud mouths.
Should I spend $50,000 on a server from HP only to find that it is unsupported in 2 years time because it is no longer trendy?”
Your kidding right? I have worked on K’s,D’s and even G class servers that were more than 2 years old that were fully supported with no preassure to upgrade. The only platform that i am aware of that HP quit supporting was the MPe platform which is ancient. HP has had PA-RISC for many many years they wisely decided that it would be cheaper to have another company specifically in the CPU business fab their processor architecture. That way they could bring the pricess down for the customer while increasing their profit margin at the same time. Something SUN should consider.
“That way they could bring the pricess down for the customer while increasing their profit margin at the same time.”
Who said Itaniums are cheap? I think the 1.5 GHz madison is around $20k (not confirmed but read on aceshardware forums). With current volumes I seriously doubt the industry is adopting itaniums like crazy. With such low volumes and other cheaper x86-64 chips from AMD and intel’s own prescott I expect the volumes fo itaniums to be low.
If it goes like this itanium will be in the same niche as Power4 and SPARCS and not ubiquitous like x86, so the chip prices won’t drop considerably. It’s all a matter of volume. Time will tell. Don;t expect deerfield to be a killer either not enough performance for the $$$, easily beaten by the opteron and AMD athlon FX.
RE: IP: —.cruzio.com/API
First, it was Alpha Processor Inc. Second, it’s been essentially dead for almost 2 years now.
Sorry to say, but Alpha is dead.
mike (who worked at API for 2.5 years and has been out of work since 2001)
But not anymore. HPs desperate flirting with NT and x86 which brought them NOTING was one of the aspects in which HP’s lack of direction was manifested.
I had and still am working with hundereds of HP servers. I worked with K, L and N class machines, and the Superdome. Also the B class workstations. These servers are awfully expensive, compared to Sun, but I was not that impressed with their quality. Build quality, that is. However, their tech support was always excellent, I have to give them that. And HP.UX had some very advanced and polished features. I particularly love the package management system (HP-SD).
But I must say a lot of people have been worried about HP’s lack of direction and lack of commitment towards UNIX. That’s hurting them, I can say.