Oracle and SUN Archive

A senior Sun executive has indicated versions of his firm's latest server chip that aren't fully functional could find their way into commodity servers as a cheap option. Sun's forthcoming Niagara chip has eight cores, but the company will sell versions with six or possibly even four, the company's top Sparc server executive said Tuesday.

Sun CEO Scott McNealy likened himself to Steve Jobs and his company to Apple Computer on the brink of launching the iPod at a convention Tuesday, suggesting the server maker is poised for take-off. Sun has been on a five-year stock slide, having lost about 90 percent of its share price since January 2000. It has not had a year of positive net income since its fiscal year 2001. In the meantime, shareholder activists are calling for Sun to do away with its "poison pill" takeover defense and realign its executives' stock option plan to be more performance-based, according to a Sun proxy filed Tuesday.

Sun Microsystems is expected to revamp its core Unix server line on Tuesday with the debut of its high-end UltraSparc IV+ processor. The big UltraSparc IV+ improvement is the inclusion of 2MB of built-in high-speed cache memory where UltraSparc IV had none. The initial clock speed of the dual-core chip is expected to be 1.5GHz.

Sun Microsystems initiated a warmer stage in its relationship with Red Hat on Monday, making conspicuous room onstage for the rival at a major server product launch. Sun prefers customers to use its Solaris operating system, which chiefly runs on Sun servers using UltraSparc processors. And as Sun launches its "Galaxy" line of x86 servers, the company is aggressively trying to build support for the Unix variant on computers with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices processors as well.

"The Sun Cobalt was open-sourced by Sun Microsystems at the end of its product lifecycle in December of 2003. OffMyServer, a provider of custom built servers and storage solutions, sponsored the porting of the Cobalt RaQ software to the FreeBSD operating system. The open source project, codenamed RAQdevil, is focused on providing an interactive community to encourage developers that are interested in working to improve the software."

The San Jose, Calif.-based hardware maker is expected to unveil a new generation of AMD Opteron-based servers, known by the code-name Galaxy, at an event in New York City. There, Sun Microsystems Inc.'s executives are expected to detail four new machines, along with its plans for software and services surrounding them.

It took 18 months for it to happen, but the hand of Bechtolsheim is about to touch Sun Microsystems. One of the more impressive features of the Becky Boxes is the way components can be replaced. Disk drives can be removed from the front of the system without pulling the box from the server rack and power supplies can be yanked from the back. Administrators can also remove fans by pulling the server only about 10 inches out of a rack. The system will ship in the same chassis as Sun's upcoming Niagara-based systems.

Sun Microsystems has set up its first department dedicated Open-Source software, in anticipation of more Sun Microsystems code being opened up to the public.

Xandros Business Edition provides a desktop environment, Xandros is easy to install and maintain. As an added bonus, Xandros Business Edition includes the full edition of CrossOver Office 4.2. That means that if there is a major Windows software package that you can't live without, chances are you will be able to install and run it on Xandros through CrossOver. Read the full review at NewsForge.

It has been a big day for Sun Microsystems today, who, after announcing their largest deal ever, now report that General Electric has selected Sun's Java System Identity Manager, "the provisioning component of the Sun Java Enterprise System, across all GE business units and 450,000 users on a global scale."

Technewsworld postulates that Gateway would be a prime takeover target for Sun Microsystems. Sun's competence on the desktop, they argue, would be greatly improved, as well as their ability to manage at an executive level.

Not too long ago Sun Microsystems proudly sold Linux on its x86 line systems, but Wednesdays press release has settled any qualms about whether this Linux-loving era has come to an end.

This article describes in detail what to expect from Sun when it comes to the SPARC platform. The 8-core Niagara chip, now planned for early 2006, is the most impressive: "In practical terms, what Niagara delivers is a chip that consumes about 56 watts that has about the same performance on infrastructure workloads as a four-way SMP rig of Xeon processors or a two-way setup using dual-core Xeons. These Xeon setups will consume hundreds of watts per processor."

Sun Microsystems' chief information officer (CIO) has backed the vendor’s embrace of corporate blogging, despite difficulties such as ensuring senior executives don’t post comments that affect the stock price and the occasional posting that makes the company’s lawyers "pull their hair out".