Submitted by OSNews reader rom508 sent us a note that apparently, Sun has ceased selling all of its UltraSPARC-based workstations, with only their x86 workstation offerings remaining. The Ultra 25 and Ultra 45 workstations, both UltraSPARC-based, are still listed on Sun’s website, but are marked as ‘end-of-life’, with the notice that they are “superceded by the next generation Sun Ultra 24 Workstation [x86]”. One must wonder if this means the end of Sun’s UltraSPARC workstation line. As a proud owner of an indestructible Ultra 5, I must say, that would be rather sad.
and with fujitsu readying an 8 core SPARC chip I would hope so. SPARC workstaions are uber powerfull and the processor archatecture is realy rather cool, and a completely open spec. It really is rather amazing.
(about the new chip)
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/150344/fujitsu_readie…
Edited 2008-08-27 22:42 UTC
I hope you didn’t miss the fact that Sun has had an 8-core chip out for years now? Their first version was capable of.. the old one, had 32 threads (read cores, more or less) per 8 core chip. The new one, has 64 threads, per 8 core chip, plus each core has its own FPU.
It’s a shame they’re pricing themselves out of business.. it would have been an interesting thing to test properly, no matter if it’s a server or workstation..
i was well aware. were you aware that the chip i mentioned was a workstation chip and not the serve chip you were talking about
Fujitsu is developing an eight-core version of its Sparc64 processor, which should give a performance boost to the Sparc Enterprise Servers that Fujitsu jointly develops with Sun Microsystems.
Not once in the article you link to, do they state “workstation”. Nor do they state “desktop” or anything like that, just like… the Sun chip. So what are you on about? Either you linked to the wrong article, or you’re not talking desktop/workstation at all? Which is it?
An 8-core SPARC64 VIII will probably be slower and cost more than a 6-core Westmere that will be available at the same time. But don’t let me interrupt your SPARC fanboyism.
I wish my Ultra 80 didn’t suck so much power or I’d be running it. It’s a great architecture for a hobbyist on a budget, you can get those machines pretty cheap on ebay these days, even with 4 CPUs. Throw in my Ultra 1 and E250 and I’ve got a lot of worthless Sun hardware at home
Can those use industry standard power supplies, or are they all proprietary. Antec has a *very* affordable line of 80 Plus certified and RoHS compliant, power factor corrected, power supplies called “EarthWatts”. I just picked up a 380W unit for $29.00 US plus shipping from NewEgg.
I’d love to take the burden of the Ultra 80 off your shoulders
.
A power-sucking machine that’s slower than a Celeron is great for a hobbyist on a budget?
As much as I generally despise computers-as-cars analogies, that’s a bit like comparing a Neon to a tractor – and then declaring the Neon the winner because it has a higher top-speed.
I’ve seen this argument for years: “SPARC is slower but it has more throughput”, “SPARC has better I/O”, etc. I’m still waiting to see a benchmark, any benchmark, that can make an ancient SPARC machine look faster than a recent x86.
Also, I don’t recommend commuting in a tractor.
*sigh* Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Nor would you (I hope) recommend using a Honda Civic to till field.
Well, I’m not really all that partisan in this area. But that still leaves the question of what work load an Ultra 80 would be really good at compared to garden variety multi-core x86_64 boxes today?
They are very slow, but if you want to work on an UltraSPARC architecture, they are really good deals.
I’m hoping that they’re release a workstation version of this system:
http://blogs.sun.com/olympus/entry/ikkaku_2u_single_cpu_sparc
It would make sense, the last few SPARC workstations have been server retrofits.
I’m sorry, but the Ultra 5/10 are NOT indestructible. The Ultra 5 is essentially the same thing as the Blade 100… both are cheap throw aways. I DO have to repair quite a few of these and it has gotten quite hard to acquire working parts.
Is the UltraSPARC workstation dead? Probably. When Sun didn’t care about x86 (remember this is the THIRD time Sun has promised to stay behind x86), UltraSPARC made a lot of sense… it was the “reliable” platform (not that it doesn’t break, but that it was the only one you could count on for support). But now that apparently Sun is going to stick it out with x86, it makes sense to drop the UltraSPARC workstation. In all fairness, the designs were lackluster and expensive.
UltraSPARC runs hot (well at least Sun thinks so). This is why there’s no good 2U unit from Sun (don’t count the broken IIIi, that’s essentially the hunk of junk in the little SunBlades as well). The UltraSPARC IV (IV+, etc) series only came in 4U configs (because of fans and cooling… though I think Sun wanted people to believe it might of been because of memory as well).
UltraSPARCs are NOT huge performers… you really need the UltraSPARC IV+ or beyond (we really want/need Rock for it to be competitive). So, IMHO, it makes sense to leave the workstation market to the x86 designs.
Which hardware parts are failing for you that you have to replace them? I have Ultra 10 which is 10 years old now and it’s still running without any problems. The only part that failed for me was NVRAM chip, because it has embedded battery, which lasts for about 10 years. When the machine could not keep time correctly and then stopped booting, all I had to do was to buy a brand new NVRAM chip (don’t get second hand on ebay, they too might have dying batteries) and replace it on the mainboard and reprogram it. Reprogramming NVRAM is pretty simple once you get the correct instructions.
I agree Ultra 5/10 are cheap and slow, but they still do the job. I use Ultra 10 as my main desktop system for email, web browsing and playing music. These machines are perfect for software developers, because they’re small, reliable and have a decent ISA (Instruction Set Architecture). There should be more developers using SPARC hardware, because there is too much software that crashes with ‘Bus error’ as soon as you run it (yes Trolltech and KDE4 teams, you’re some of them).
Well, at least Sun’s new multicore processors are open, maybe somebody will develop a new workstation or even a mobile platform for them. I’d love to have a decent SPARC notebook. I think if Sun want to see SPARC in the future and have people developing software for their platform, they should encourage developers to use their platform. Just produce something half decent and not too expensive, like cheap SPARC notebooks and workstations and hardware documentation. Most people don’t need 3GHz processors, I’m pretty happy with 440MHz UltraSPARCIIi, it doesn’t take long to compile whatever assembly or C code I develop. It’s the architecture that matters, I think SPARC is much nicer than x86.
I though Sun had already said they were converting into a solution company (software + server os + servers) and were quitting architecture R&D (no more SPARC cpus)???
SPARC is sun’s biggest cash cow, why on earth would they give it up?
Heard of this wonderful thing called ‘return on investment’ – well, yes, this is the time to say that no, they aren’t making a decent return on their investment. The chip wars has ended, x86 has won. Intel has tried to kill it, IBM has, SUN has – everyone has tried to kill the x86 – but it has kept on ticking. Its not sexy, but it does the job.
As for the SPARC so-called ‘performance lead’ – just look at the information about Quick Path and you’ll find that the SPARC backplane is dead, gone, finished. The only people still trying to resuscitate are those who wish to feel like precious snow flakes by running rare hardware and those who can’t face reality.
Is SPARC going to have a place? yes, it is going to become the mainframe of Sun, with x86 fitting in the position of everything below that. Sun need to get their act together now and do something about their Solaris x86 hardware support and software availability. If they have no edge in terms of software, hardware, speed, reliability over Linux – where are they going to compete? price? well, that will finish them off for sure if they try a ‘race to the bottom’.
Wow Kaiwai you couldn’t sound any more condescending even if you tried.
I have information as in real numbers internally from SUN, that basically makes all the sense in the world for them to keep SPARC. The investment and return ratios are fairly healthy, now you can sit down in your basement and cojecture all you want.
Mate, if the ROI was so clear cut – then how come we don’t see healthy competition within the desktop market? how come the only two desktop CPU vendors are both marketing virtually the same product? How come we don’t see mountains of different CPU vendors in the enterprise space? its gone from MIPS, PARISC, POWER, ALPHA (I’m sure I’m missing a few) to x86 with SPARC, POWER, Itanium at the really high end (Itanium IMHO is going to die as Intel has realised that the x86 can scale and the doomsayers were wrong).
Amount of investment required, and the volume required to recuperate these investments just doesn’t add up in the end – I don’t know what ‘internal numbers’ you have seen, but it is obviously not anything based on ‘reality’. The ‘reality’ is that the cost of development is steeply increasing as the issues become more complex – that is why they have teamed up with Fujitsu in a hope of sharing the burden and increasing the volume off a single architecture. That will be doomed to failure as the x86 continues to keep scaling up, and people like you keep spitting and cursing at those who point out the inevitable.
Edited 2008-08-28 20:42 UTC
It easy: exactly the two (“virtually one and the same”) are needed for (still) dominant OS – MS Windows.
Things might be changed with growing Linux popularity. Average user isn’t aware about all that technical details – so, (s)he’s buying Intel/AMD-based machine not because of repulsion for MIPS/SPARC/whatever, but just because Intel or AMD is needed by the software, which (s)he’s going to use.
As much as I would like for SPARC to take off as a viable alternative to x86, it isn’t going to happen unfortunately. I’d love to see improvements, but it would require billions – even Nvidia said that it is financial suicide (well, not in those words but they were implied by what he said) to enter into the CPU market these days.
I guess the only hope is either for the Chinese MIPS based processor to take off, an eccentric billionaire decides to spend $10billion on a fabrication plant and R&D for SPARC to make it competitive with Intel, or through some divine measure there is a rapid change to low powered devices supported by a beefier StrongARM based processor.
For me, it doesn’t necessarily have to be as fast as an x86, but if it is moderately fast, reasonable battery life for laptops and a reasonable price (right right SPARC based products are obscenely expensive) – I’d be happy for it as an alternative. Heck, a SPARC IIe in a laptop and I’d be a happy chap – performance for me become a minor concern a long time ago – today, its all about the software ontop and the quality of the operating system underneath. The difference between hardware is no longer a matter between buying a BWM or a Lada/Skoda/Volga/Travant/Soviet era car.
Edited 2008-08-28 23:50 UTC
But we’ve got one already… he went to outer space just “to take a trip”, so perhaps…?
Yes, and because of this I wrote: the software (available for that hypothetical machine) matters.
You are making the mistake of thinking that the desktop is the entire computing world (a common mistake for folks with relatively-limited computer exposure). It isn’t. At the *huge* end of the transaction-processing scale Windows is not dominant at all. Just ’cause you can’t see it on your desk (or your mommas) doesn’t means Sun gear isn’t in all sorts of places working hard. Windows is also pitifully represented in supercomputing as well, check out the Top 500 by OS family: http://www.top500.org/stats/list/31/osfam See who is the powerhouse there.
In fact, the Sparcs that Sun sells are targeted for other (more lucrative per unit volume) markets where reliability and scalability matter most (eg. banks, credit houses, government ministries/departments). These machines are expensive, but the customers in this segment have the cash and will pay for reliability – since it is cheaper to get one of these and a decent sysadmin, than to require an army of MSCEs to babysit the system (in some industries an outtage of an hour can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so even the Sun gear doesn’t look like a bad investment then).
No, I’m not. But perhaps you know better, what I’m making. :]
OK – so just make a comparison, how many desktops have been sold last year, and how many machines have been bought by banks (and even credit houses). Compare sales volume, estimated earnings, and so on. OK?
I’m seriously afraid, that Sun just can’t make its machines only “for banks & ministres”. Even, when credit houses will buy some more.
You are making a mistake of thinking, that Sun is alone on the market, and nobody else can make computers for banks (and credit houses). And your second mistake is a supposition, that bank won’t buy Intel-based machine, neither will credit house.
There’s a lot more of these cases – banks are just an example. What about things like airports, (air) traffic controls, harbours, multinational store establishments like Media Markt, Aldi, etc., the chemcical industry, research labs, and so on, and so forth.
The data centres and number crunching boxes that those people have aren’t x86 machines running Windows or Linux – these will be IBM POWER machines or massive Sun SPARC rigs.
It’s really amazing, how willingly so many of you are taking assumption: “my opponent is stupid” (wanna some flamming, or sth?).
You seriously think, that I’m not aware, that is was just example? That I really needed your explanation? Then consider, please, is it really me, who seems to be stupid.
The questions from my previous comment are still valid… did you compare the sales volume? Of course not. But it seems, that Sun managers did it.
…or x86 (Denebs, Opterons or alike) machines running anything else, than Windows (or Linux). Or x86 machines running Windows, or Linux (why not, actually?).
Even Apple is making x86 machines today, dropped PowerPC.
Please do not recourse to strawmen to make your point, OK?
I was very clear: as far as sun goes SPARC is a very good return on their investment. If you need to put words in my mouth trying to make it like SUN wants to go against the x86 desktop market, that is just plain silly.
They have a fairly good stream of revenue around the solaris/sparc based systems. Same for IBM and their power systems. That is why they keep on developing. Usually those systems are no where near the desktop but more in the lines of the data center.
Anyhow, since my colleagues at SUN have managed to make a multibillion dollar company work.. I would not be so quick to dismiss them because they conflict with your insight. Because frankly it makes you sound like a bit of a pompous arse.
Honestly, when was the last time you were excited by anything hardware-related Sun announced?
There has been very aggressive posturing from IBM on this:
Historically, Sun has long sold far more Unix boxes than rivals, using its higher volumes to justify the in-house production of UltraSPARC chips. But Handy thinks that Sun’s x86 business is cutting into those volumes, making UltraSPARC, like Itanium, a doubtful long-term proposition.
“They are already signaling to customers the beginning of the end,” Handy said. “Rock (Sun’s next UltraSPARC chip family) is their last-ditch effort, and no matter what their volume is it’s already too small to afford what comes after the first Rock chip.”
See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/10/ibm_itanium_five_years/
I don’t necessarily agree with all of it (I have two SS20s myself and they still serve their purpose well) but some of it rings true to me.
Well, I though http://blogs.sun.com/HPC/entry/magnum_interactive_tour_sun_datacent… was pretty exciting, but maybe I’m just a nerd.
There is simply no SPARC processor which is suitable for workstation, so this is just logical consequence, that Sun quits this market. SPARC processors have geat thorughput, but low single core performance, so as long as lot of workstation software is not multithreaded and does not need lot of thoughput, but relies on great floating-point and integer performance, SPARC-based workstation is useless. The only argument for SPARC-workstation is to use it for development of software, but Itanium shows that it is possible to have servers only and still be able to do software development.
What is advantage of workstation compared with a CITRIX-based solution anyway? Decent graphics performance, but did SPARC-based workstation had decent graphics performance?
So RIP SPARC-workstation. Used them a lot in university and had a Blade100 at work (EDA). Now we are all CITRIX-based and Linux-servers are running circles around SPARC-servers when it comes to heavy calculations, but when it comes to lot of GUI work, SPARC-server still rules.
Anton
Edited 2008-08-28 06:38 UTC
People complain of T1 having poor performance. Each one of the 64 threads has performance of one P3@1GHz.
But the complaints are because they dont load the machine up. They try test data which is small, then the x86 servers will do very well, and the T1 will do bad. But when they try real production data that is really large, then the x86 servers do very bad and T1 outperforms the x86 servers by a large margin.
The T1 does shine with BIG workloads where they outclass any x86 servers. For small test workloads, T1 suck and any x86 outclasses them.
I second what you just said! We have quite a few Sun T2000’s running the T1 processor. By quite a few, I mean several hundred. Each one is loaded down with four Java JVM’s, serving as middle-ware processors. We process billions of transactions each month, and these machines just keep on running.
Heh, I finally got them to give me one as a development machine. It isn’t completely “mine”, it is a shared resource, but it does the job handily.
Just as apple used them to run PowerPC code on x86, and even SGI uses them to run MIPS on Itanium, SUN needs to license these guys to run SPARC code on the x86.
They even have the product in question, ready here:
http://www.transitive.com/products/solsparc_solx86
The cool thing is this would allow people to not only keep on running solaris on boxes that are frankly cheaper, faster & easier to maintain, but would allow people to run their existing applications.
Something like this would make sense for SUN to bundle on their own hardware as an incentive to get people to buy SUN across the board…. Which is probably why they never will do it.
SUN has to have the worst possible set of corporate direction, and will no doubt blow even, this chance to maintain a lead on it’s own platform’s migration strategys.
But hell, if APPL can do it, why not SUNW/JAVA???
Why should I by a Sun UltraSPARC workstation, instead of a high-end x86-64 one?
What advantages/disadvantages offer one compared to the other?
It depends on what you do with it. High-end SPARC hardware costs a lot, so x86 will be cheaper, there is also more software for x86, you could run Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS, etc + the applications that come with each OS.
People like you and me, usually get low-end SPARC hardware, which is cheap and slow. One advantage is the price, if you don’t play 3D games and don’t do heavy multimedia work, then the low-end SPARC will be OK for general desktop use. A few years ago I paid about $200 for Ultra 10 + extras like SCSI hard disks etc., which is as much as I’m willing to spend on computer hardware at the moment. My Ultra 10 runs NetBSD + kde-3.5.9 and it’s very usable for browsing internet, reading email, playing mp3s and some light digital photography applications like Gimp and digiKam.
If you’re a developer, SPARC makes a good development machine. It’s a 64-bit big-endian architecture with strict memory alignment rules. Sometimes sloppy C/C++ code will run on x86, but try it on SPARC and the program will crash. This is good for finding bugs and making sure you don’t access or dereference datatypes in an unsafe manner.
If you’re interested in operating system design and want to develop and small OS of your own, SPARC assembly is much easier to work with than x86, it’s a much saner instrucation set architecture. It’s a RISC architecture, it has more registeres than x86 and one aspect of SPARC architecture is the windowed registers for passing function arguments. This allows most function arguments to be passed via registers inside CPU instead of via a stack in main memory. This is why SPARC at 400MHz is much more efficient than a similar x86 machine at 400MHz
Of cause the new x86 processors from Intel and AMD are way faster than any SPARC on low-end. It’s a shame Sun are not making much effort to catch up (performance and price). Still I think SPARC is a nice architecture and hopefully there is future for it, Sun’s new multicore processors and the upcoming Rock are looking pretty good.
Edited 2008-08-28 12:01 UTC
There are only a few places where a Sun Sparc workstation is best suited like main computer in a subway-railway system.
No. It’s deader than a dead thing. Sun’s workstations proved to be extremely underpowered even in the last decade when compared with any x86 machine, and once Linux took off on x86 Sun’s chip design market disappeared overnight. Anybody who still does that kind of work on a SPARC workstation is, quite frankly, a bit of an idiot.
I’m always amazed at how insulting some people are when it comes to other people’s hobbies and preferences.
Why all the hate?
because it’s between segedunum and Sun
“because it’s between segedunum and Sun
”
Ah, first I didnt notice. But then you pointed out it was segedunum, which explains the hate in the post.
Edited 2008-08-28 13:15 UTC
http://www.edcgi.ro/html1/metrorex.html
Edited 2008-08-28 14:30 UTC
Didnt understand your link. Do you mean Sun is obsolete? What are you trying to say?
They may be EOL, but that sure didn’t stop them from selling us 6. I must say I don’t understand, if they keep this up those workstations might be eventually replaced by HP’s running OpenSolaris or even *shudder* Linux.
Thats a nice case for a PC though.
Looks very heavy.
How come you aren’t offering to install operating systems on SUN Hardware?
What does that have to do with… anything?
Not a damn thing, but it’s becoming fashionable to proclaim companies must allow third parties to install their operating systems without their permission.
So “reductio ad absurdum” then?