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Server maker Sun Microsystems
this week announced that it was splitting its Sparc processor
development group from its Systems group, and putting David Yen, a key
executive who once ran Sun's chip business, back in charge after he had
a 10-month stint running the merged Sun and StorageTek storage
businesses. The move coincided with the naming of Jon Benson, formerly
the vice president of tape engineering, as senior vice president of
Sun's storage business.
Server maker Sun Microsystems
this week announced that it was splitting its Sparc processor
development group from its Systems group, and putting David Yen, a key
executive who once ran Sun's chip business, back in charge after he had
a 10-month stint running the merged Sun and StorageTek storage
businesses. The move coincided with the naming of Jon Benson, formerly
the vice president of tape engineering, as senior vice president of
Sun's storage business.
Yen is not stranger to moves at Sun, and has been used in recent years
as a point man to cope with problems in Sun's business units; he has
had his own share of woes as the person who headed up the development
of various Sparc processor lines as well. The UltraSparc-III
processors, for instance, were several years late and when they finally
did make their debut in September 2001, they were underpowered relative
to alternatives and the systems using them were costly. It was Yen who
killed off the "Millennium" UltraSparc-V and "Gemini" UltraSparcIIIi
processors in April 2004, when he was also named to head up the
Scalable Systems unit, which merged Sparc chip development with the
Sparc-based Sun Fire server line to get some tighter coupling between
chip and server development. Up until then, Sun's Sparc chip business
operated as a separate unit, developing processors that other Sun units
planned to use, but sometimes did not use very effectively. (Remember
the MAJC Java processor? Whatever happened to that?)
April 2004 was, of course, when Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's current chief
executive officer, was named as chief operating officer, setting the
stage for his rise. Getting the Sparc business back on track was key
back then, since the bulk of Sun's server revenues and an even larger
portion of its profits came from these machines. After years of
customers unplugging Sparc boxes for other RISC/Unix or Linux on X86
systems, Sun knew that it needed to get better UltraSparc processors
into the field. The dual-core "Cheetah" UltraSparc-IV chips, which Yen
steered to the market, were a step in the right direction, and with the
"Panther" UltraSparc-IV+ kickers announced in September 2005, Sun
finally had a chip in the field that it did not have to be embarrassed
by when it came to performance or bang for the buck. And, consequently,
customers have begun investing in Sparc boxes again.
The delay in the jointly developed "Jupiter" servers that Sun is hoping
to bring to market soon with partner Fujitsu
is a bit of an embarrassment, but it is Fujitsu's dual-core Sparc64 VI
"Jupiter" chip that is delayed. Sun and Fujitsu announced their
partnership to develop a kicker to the Panther systems in June 2004,
and said they would use Fujitsu's Sparc clones. The so-called Advanced
Product Line machines were expected around mid-2006 originally, and now
are expected sometime in the first half of 2007. That means within the
next three months.
Yen also had a hand in the move away from traditional Sparc processor
designs and the embracing of multithreaded designs, such as the current
"Niagara" Sparc T1 chips and the future "Rock" chips. Sun has now sold
some $500 million or so worth of Sparc T1 servers, and perhaps more
importantly, it is seen as being an innovator in the energy-conscious
data center of today rather than the performance-crazed data center of
the past. Niagara is still a drop in the worldwide server bucket--less
than one percent of annual server sales--but it gives Sun a positive
message to sell and a product that is presumably profitable and growing
faster than the market at large. It sure beats the alternative, which
is the kicks in the teeth that Sun took from late 2000 through about
the middle of last year, when it was clear that the Panther and Niagara
chips were pretty good products.
Yen was unavailable for comment about his appointment as vice president
and general manager of the reconstituted Microelectronics group at Sun.
And Schwartz did all of the talking in the statement that Sun released
about the executive changes, proclaiming that Sun would be expanding
its focus on chip designs. (Which begs the question, can you really expand a focus?).
The Microelectronics group will be a hodge-podge of projects and
products that fit Yen's expertise, including Sparc processors, network
co-processors like Sun's "Neptune" cryptographic chip, as well as
high-performance computing.
"The broad acceptance of the open source Solaris operating system
running on Dell, HP and IBM hardware shows that Sun's innovations have
value and appeal beyond our own servers and storage products," Schwartz
explained. "With numerous successes including the success of our
UltraSparc T1 processors fueling the growth of our chip multi-threaded
servers, the tapeout of our Rock processors defining new terrain in
high-productivity computing, and innovations like Project Neptune
opening entirely new markets for our technology. Now is the time to
fuel that same success with our Microelectronics products. As with our
software, decoupling our silicon from a strict reliance on Sun's
systems raises our profile and opportunity globally."
As you might expect, that was obviously Sun putting the best spin on
Yen's move and the naming of a new head of the storage unit. But Yen
really went into the storage business to rationalize its product line
and kill off a bunch of products, much as he did with the Sparc
business years ago. And if he is being put in charge of chips again, it
is probably not just because Sun sees this wonderful opportunity, but because something is wrong.
As we previously reported, there is a rumor going around that Texas Instruments,
who just so happens to be Sun's chip fabrication partner for its Sparc
processors and has been since day one (with Fujistu having a short gig
to make UltraSparc-II chips back in the dot-com days when Sun could not
keep up with demand because demand was huge, not because it
underestimated demand), has fired some 500 chip experts who develop
advanced chip fabrication technologies. (This information comes from
Carl Johnson, the main analyst at semiconductor watcher InfraStructure.)
This TI rumor hit about the same time that Sun and Intel
got buddy-buddy, with Sun promising to use Intel Xeon chips in its
"Galaxy" X64 server line and Intel promising to support Solaris on
those chips. Maybe it is a coincidence. Maybe the TI layoffs are not
what they seem. But something else might be up, especially if Sun is
shopping around for a new fab partner.
Intel clearly has the manufacturing volume and technologies to
implement Sun's Niagara and Rock chips, but the design of a chip and
the very specific manufacturing processes are tightly coupled. Sun
can't just send some chip masks to Intel and say "give me 2 million of
these next week." Sun and Fujitsu could partner on chip design and
manufacture, but the delays in the APL product line--whatever they are,
since neither vendor talks about it--probably are not making Fujitsu
look as appealing as a chip supplier as it might otherwise. Sun's
Niagara-2 and Rock-1 chips use TI's already-designed 65 nanometer
processes, but future Niagara-3 and Rock-2 chips will use 45 nanometer
processes. I happen to think that by the 45 nanometer era, there will
be tremendous economic pressure for chip makers to partner to share
costs, and that we could end up with only be two fabricators of
processors: Intel on one side and everyone else on the other. It is
hard to say where Sun will end up. I have a sneaking suspicion that
what Yen is really being asked to do is sort that out--and to do so in
such a way that future Rock and Niagara chips are not delayed, and
perhaps even accelerated to market.
Read the original article: http://www.itjungle.com/breaking/bn032807-story01.html
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