Oracle and SUN Archive

Reaffirming prior statements, Sun said that it intends to open-source its Java and N1 software at a later date. The free software will cover its Java Enterprise System set of server middleware, Java development tools and N1 management software. The move will create a single package called the Solaris Enterprise System. It will include Sun's Solaris 10 operating system, PostgreSQL open-source database, the Java Enterprise System server software and tools, Sun N1-branded provisioning and management tools, and Secure Desktop software.

"Sun Studio 11 software is the latest release of optimizing compilers and tools for the C, C++ and Fortran developer. This release delivers the highest optimizations and the best performance in the development of scalable 32-bit and 64-bit applications on Sun's newest hardware platforms including the latest multi-core UltraSPARC, x64 and x86 platforms. And Sun Studio 11 software now removes the price barrier and is available for free."

Sun this week is unveiling its long-touted "Niagara" processor, the third major rollout in the past two months for the company, which is aggressively trying to separate itself from its past as a vendor focused solely on its SPARC-Solaris platform for high-end customers. The chip offers eight cores per chip running up to four instruction threads each and addresses the growing issues of energy consumption and heat generation by using only 70 watts of power.

As part of a painfully slow and vague striptease, Sun has started to describe a couple of techniques it will use to improve processor performance in its soon to be released Niagara chip and future Rock processor line. Despite hinting a couple of years back that Niagara would have special technology for handling TCP/IP and SSL loads, Sun has stayed largely quiet on the subject. Recently, however, Sun confirmed that its Niagara processors and Solaris 10 operating system have been tweaked to handle these specialized tasks.

Glynn Foster wrote on his blog that Sun's throwing away the desktop which is based on GNOME because of different problems they see in maintaining it. There is also a full article about it on LXer.

Sun has big plans for its Java Desktop System and on Tuesday announced a new program that will allow its desktop Linux variant to run on all major Linux distributions. While Sun remains fully committed to the JDS on both the Solaris and Sun Ray environments, it seeks to address the Linux space going forward and offer customers choice in this regard. In addition, Sun on Wednesday is expected to announce that its Java Enterprise System server software now supports Microsoft's Windows and Hewlett-Packard's UX operating systems.

Many of you will remember the fanfare and bravado surrounding Sun Microsystems' Sep. 2004 announcement of a $1 per hour per processor utility computing plan. What you won't remember is Sun revealing a single customer using the service. That's because it hasn't. More than one year since it first started hyping the "pay-for-use grid computing services" Sun is still weeks away from presenting a customer to the public. The program has proved much tougher to sell that Sun ever imagined.

"Despite its recent announcement of servers based on AMD64 CPUs, Sun Microsystems is still gung-ho about its 64-bit UltraSPARC computers. The newest addition to Sun's workstation array is the portable Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation. At first glance you might think it's a fancy-looking notebook system, but on closer inspection you'll discover that it's got all the power of a Sun Blade workstation in a fraction of the size."

These days, engineers at Sun Microsystems have their counterparts at chipmaker AMD on speed dial. Sun, whose turnaround plan bets heavily AMD Opteron-based processor servers, has gained the ear of the chipmaker over the last two years and thus is helping shape the future of the Opteron, which charged on the scene in early 2003 as a competitor to Intel's Xeon.

Sun on Monday began selling its highest-end Unix servers with new 1.5GHz UltraSPARC IV+ chips. Sun used its milestones and monster servers as fodder for bashing IBM, which recently began a Unix server upgrade. IBM has slotted the Power5+ chips into low-end systems but won't give higher-end servers the same boost until 2006. Even then, IBM isn't expected to have a system comparable in size to the E25K.

Sun has rejected notions that bundling the Google Toolbar with Java Runtime will be anticompetitive, especially since users will still have the option to install other toolbars such as Yahoo.

"Sun Microsystems must have figured digital rights management never sounded so good when it recently announced a call for partners in its quest to use open source DRM to "compensate rights holders and stimulate innovation," but Sun's open DReaM (DRM everywhere available) Project is as scary as any other content control nightmare to open source and digital freedom proponents."

Jonathan Schwartz keeps singing Sun's favourite tune - that Web services, not desktop apps, are the future. "The majority of the applications that will drive the next wave of innovation will be services, not applications that run on the desktop. The real innovation is occurring in the network and the network services," Schwartz said.

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.