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Hopefully someone at Sun Microsystems can still explain why the Rock processor is still a good idea.
Today, Sun confirmed what we told you long ago - it's delaying
Rock-based servers until the second half of 2009. The company made this
admission at its analysts conference in San Francisco. We didn't hear a
single question from the pundits about this slip - a curious
performance to say the least.
Hopefully someone at Sun Microsystems can still explain why the Rock processor is still a good idea.
Today, Sun confirmed what we told you long ago - it's delaying
Rock-based servers until the second half of 2009. The company made this
admission at its analysts conference in San Francisco. We didn't hear a
single question from the pundits about this slip - a curious
performance to say the least.
The Rock-based boxes were once meant to arrive later this year,
putting Sun in prime position to wallop Itanium- and Power-based
systems from HP and IBM. The Rock chip boasts 16 cores and support for
unreal amounts of memory. In addition, it can handle single- and
multi-threaded software well, as we understand it.
Rather than shedding tears over the delay, Sun is pitching it as a
victory for the company. The systems produced in conjunction with
Fujitsu around the SPARC64 chips continue to sell very well. In the
second half of this year, Sun will upgrade that gear with four-core
versions of SPARC64. So, Sun presented the analysts with a "if it ain't
broke why fix it" line to soften the blow of the Rock slip.
We see how attractive the prospect of fighting tooth and nail with
IBM and HP for Unix server sales must be. Why bother giving yourself an
edge by arguably jumping a generation ahead of rivals with a superstar
new chip? That would be too easy.
Of course, what else is Sun supposed to say?
In the larger context, the Rock delay really might be okay.
In the first half of this year, Sun plans to release two-socket
servers based on the Niagara III chip - aka Victoria Falls. Then, Sun
will pop out blades based on that chip in the second half of 2008 and
ship a four-socket server in the second half of 2008 as well. (We told
you as much, er, two years ago, but who's counting.)
This Niagara-based gear sounds like some serious iron. You get 128
threads per box, and that adds up quickly when you think about stuffing
a rack with, say, 48 Victoria Falls blades.
According to Sun's server chief John Fowler, a four-socket Victoria
Falls server will match an eight-socket IBM p 570 running on 4.7GHz
Power6 chips on database performance while consuming one quarter of the
space and one third of the power. Sun's system will also be one-third
the cost of IBM's, Fowler expects.
If Sun's figures hold up, then you have to wonder why it would even
bother with Rock. Why not kill the chip and use the extra R&D money
to keep the Niagara line on track? Surely, Sun could apply some of the
Rock tricks to future versions of Niagara and end up in a similar spot.
You really just lose out on the single-thread performance, and Sun
seems well committed to a multi-core world.
But, hey, we're dumb hacks not business gurus. And we're sure an
awful lot of you will appreciate the single thread splendor of Rock.
(Never mind that the US government was meant to foot part of the
bill for Rock 2 before Sun lost a huge contract to Cray and IBM.)
Away from UltraSPARC land, Sun plans to ship more and more
Barcelona- and Xeon-based servers in the coming year. It's already got
tons of 2.0GHz four-core Opterons (Barcelona) humming away at a Texas
supercomputing center. Yes, the bug patch has been applied. And, yes,
someone is going to pay for an upgrade when the fixed Opterons arrive.
AMD, we're looking at you.
With storage, Sun is set to release a number of "open" products in
2008 and to update its tape library gear in the first half of the year.
In addition, Sun will release a second version of its multi-host
10Gb Ethernet NIC in the second half of the year, while it will release
a smaller scale version of its Mangum monster switch in the first half of the year.
Read the original article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/06/sun_servers_2008/
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