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The Return of the Sun Workstation, With AMD's Help

Posted by timothy on Wed Oct 27, 2004 04:01 PM
from the not-black-hole-sun dept.
Sun Microsystems AMD Operating Systems Software Unix Hardware Linux
Hack Jandy writes "Would you be surprised to hear Sun is the lowest cost Tier 1 dual-Opteron provider? AnandTech benchmarks Sun's newest w2100z and includes some sneak peaks at Solaris 10 and Java Desktop System 2. The biggest surprise at the end - it costs less than IBM and HP's configurations. Has Sun learned from the demise of SGI workstations that relying on one processor architecture is harmful?" CrzyP adds "They perform various benchmarks including 2D/3D rendering, compiling, encryption, and thermal and noise performance, and compare the 64-bit Sun box with various other configurations, including varying operating systems."
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  • some info about Java Desktop (Score:4, Informative)

    by hsmith (818216) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:06PM (#10646844)
    Since the article doesn't link it

    http://wwws.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/ [sun.com]

  • I dunno (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:07PM (#10646859)
    Has Sun learned from the demise of SGI workstations that relying on one processor architecture is harmful?

    The lesson I'd learn from SGI is that jumping into the WinTel server market is harmful.


    • Sun is not taking the retarded path of SGI or Intergraph. The Sun Opteron boxes are certified for Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Sun will provide Solaris or Linux, but customers provide their own Windows (last I checked). For companies who already have Windows site licenses, this is not a problem at all.

      Sun are keeping SPARC for data centers and engineering workstations and adding Opteron for everything that Opteron is good at. Sun is making Java and JDS the common thread among the two product lines, lea

  • As I remember... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NoMoreNicksLeft (516230) <[ten.tsacmoc] [ta] [relyo.nhoj]> on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:08PM (#10646865) Journal
    SGI started going downhill about the same time they first offered a WinNT machine. But yeh, it's a good thing to homogenize all our processor architectures, because there is only one perfect CPU, and Intel makes it.

    Am I the only one who longs for when we actually had a choice of CPUs?
    • What are you talking about? Maybe I am just not detecting sarcasm? But right now AMD is kicking some intel butt when it comes to benchmarks... and that is not counting any non x86 procs. I am sure there are arguments for other chips being better due to a better design structure. I personally think the P4 was a bad design from the get go and now they are starting to realize that themselves once they got to a point where they can't just keep ramping up the clock speed. Thus AMD has pulled ahead.
      • No matter how much they tweak it, no matter who takes over making the arch, it's still x86. And x86 isn't bad, in itself... it's bad that it will be one of the few (only?) left. That annoys me. That people think it a good thing, that's plain frightening.

        • Re:As I remember... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Waffle Iron (339739) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:53PM (#10647373)
          And x86 isn't bad, in itself... it's bad that it will be one of the few (only?) left. That annoys me. That people think it a good thing, that's plain frightening.

          Can you name one feature (other than endianness or a few percent benchmark edge) that a user or even a C developer would notice that's different between an modern X86 CPU and any other modern CPU?

          X86 is just an instruction bytecode format. The internals of today's X86 CPUs vary almost as much as the internals of CPUs with differring instruction sets.

            • Yes, most CPUs have converged to a very similar feature set. However, I don't think that you can blame it on the "X86ness" of it. It's just because those are the features that seem to work with today's chip-making technology. It's probably the same reason that all modern jet airliners look almost exactly the same.
    • You run Linux and you can get a choice of Intel i386, IBM PPC G4/G5, and even more ...
      • And 15 years ago, I had x86, 68k, sparc, mips, parisc, alpha, and quite a few more people probably wouldn't even recognize. Linux is ok, don't get me wrong, but I tolerate anything significantly non-Windows.
        • If you weren't a AC retard, I could tell you how to turn off sigs, and expect you to at least be alerted that someone replied.

          By definition, sigs can't be on topic. They're personal, and can be a pun or joke, or, simply because we're allowed to use href's in them, I assume CmdrTaco wants us to be able to link to some site we find interesting. More than a few people link to a homepage of their own, or a project they work on. This is what I'm doing.

          My comments are often trollish, even more often sarcastic.
    • It's not so much that Intel is the perfect CPU. It's just that economies of scale in the x86 CPU market give it a huge advantage over other CPU architectures, and this effect was amplified by the Gigahertz Race between Intel and AMD. They can simply afford to spend more on R&D and sell CPUs for less because of the huge x86 PC market. The only other company in the running is IBM, and they have a good chunk of the desktop CPU market too thanks to Apple.
      • So because they use an external interface that's less than perfect, your main stream solutions are horrible chips? You do realize that, interally, almost any modern x86 CPU is very RISC-like in nature right?

        I suppose the 64-bit versions are different, but if they still run x86 instructions... what's the point?

        My car gets 40mpg on the highway, but if it still burns nasty old gasoline... what's the point?

        Really, other than as a matter of academic holier-than-thou showery, your position is a bit silly. Whi

  • What would really be surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by overshoot (39700) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:08PM (#10646868)
    would be if they actually got their X11 implementation working almost as well as an etch-a-sketch.

    I finally escaped from 7 years on a Sun workstation to a Linux box. Solaris had its advantages, but X11 wasn't one of them and CDE wasn't another.

    • The magic of Opteron is that you can be using a Sun workstation, getting low-cost high-performance Opteron CPUs and also be running Linux. I think that was the purpose of the article.

      (written on a Sun w2100z dual Opteron box running Ubuntu AMD64 Linux with VMWare installed).

    • Re:What would really be surprising (Score:4, Funny)

      by idiotnot (302133) <sean@757.org> on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:48PM (#10647299) Journal
      the beta of sol10 x86 I've been running uses x.org. No problems at all with my Radeon 9k. Accel 2D only.

    • Re:What would really be surprising (Score:4, Insightful)

      by upsidedown_duck (788782) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @07:37PM (#10648870)
      Solaris had its advantages, but X11 wasn't one of them and CDE wasn't another.

      1) Your Sun workstation had a genuine and complete OpenGL implementation.
      2) Sun provides the configuration for the X server, so you don't have to.
      3) Sun's packages generally update the X server configuration for you, so you don't have to.
      4) XDM for remote logins works out of the box.
      5) Sun's drivers are integration tested with the hardware, so there are few suprises.

      The only detractions I can say about Xsun/CDE are that there are extensions becoming popular in the XFree86/X.org realm that Sun hasn't adopted, yet, and that CDE, while functional, definitely has some flakes. However, I still use CDE, because GNOME still has a long way to go (looking foward to seeing how Solaris 10's GNOME works).

      On the flip side, getting OpenGL working under many PC configurations is a flat out nightmare, and the configurations files are also a nightmare. Linux/X.org are nice, but even a rose has thorns.

  • Need modern workstation (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:08PM (#10646869)
    Damn! If I only had a MODERN Sun workstation it might just have been fast enough to get first pos!

    On the subject of workstations though... At a train station, trains stop. At a bus stations, buses stop. What does work do at a workstation?
      • Your glass is half-empty: trains also start at train stations and buses also start at bus stations.

        You don't live in the UK then. Trains starting or stopping at stations is considered foolish optomism here.

        Usual behaviour is considered to be failing to arrive, failing to go anywhere, getting halfway and breaking down or just sitting for hours at a time in the middle of nowhere. On a good day. With the right kind of leaves. And the wrong kind of Terrorists.
  • Coupled with the xeon trade-in program, you can take a further $600 off off the w2100z price.

    I wonder how much AMD is subsidizing the deal to gain more market saturation?

    The truth is, the xeon is incredibly popular. I still can't get over how HP dropped itanium due to xeon. So why won't Sun sell a xeon?

    • Re:Their Xeon trade-in program is still going on t (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jahf (21968) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:20PM (#10646988) Journal
      Actually the best way to buy a w2100z, if you don't need it -today- but do want it cheap, is to buy off of Ebay. They are regularly going for about 1/2 the retail price.

      And AMD isn't subsidizing this at all, at least not actively. Sun just happens to be willing to sell for much lower than their traditional margins on these products to get back some of the workstation market. They have realized that workstations were a wedge into the hearts and minds of the admins who later (sometimes years later) made decisions on servers. And Sun has some very well priced Opteron servers now, too.
        • Must have been awhile back ...

          Sun's Xeon servers (V60x and V65x) came out about 15 months ago. The LX50 (a P3 Xeon based server) came out about a year before that.

          Sun's Opteron servers (V20z and V40z) started showing up about 6 months ago.

          Sun doesn't have any Intel based workstations ... the trade-in programs are generally to encourage people to give up their Xeons from other sources :)

          Sun's Opteron workstations (w1100z and w2100z) started showing up a couple months ago.

          Sun also has a low voltage Xeon

  • For those who don't want to click through... (Score:4, Informative)

    by GillBates0 (664202) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:12PM (#10646908) Homepage Journal
    Direct link to the Conclusions page [anandtech.com]

    The results of the SPEC benchmarks (Page 8 [anandtech.com]) look quite impressive, from a cursory look at the graphs (more=better). It seemed to outperform RH9 and SuSE9.1 on most of them.

    Quite an extensive review IMHO.

  • Yes, but how did it stack up in Doom3?

  • Typical (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DNS-and-BIND (461968) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:17PM (#10646953) Homepage
    Everyone in the PC world worries about cost as their main consideration. Well, that's only an issue if you have one system, and you pay for that yourself. Real Computers, individuals don't buy them, and believe it or not, price is occasionally not the first and last consideration.
    • Computers, individuals don't buy them, and believe it or not, price is occasionally not the first and last consideration.

      It's the availability of infinitely long tapes.

    • A bit of Mac whoring from a price perspective... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ikewillis (586793) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @07:48PM (#10648944) Homepage
      Even in the enterprise and scientific community cost is still a consideration. I come from a scientific computing group that used to pay $20,000 for dual UltraSPARC-III Sun Blade workstations, then moved to Linux clusters, and is now moving to Apple clusters and Apple workstations. After being given a large discount by Apple, we found Apple's offer of cluster of 20 dual 2.0GHz G5 Xserves to be more powerful (and certainly less problematic) than Dell's offer of 20 3.2GHz Nocona Xeons. We found the new Intel Fortran Compiler 8.1 with EM64T support to be rather underwelming... its binaries optimized for the 64-bit Nocona Xeons with SSE3 couldn't outperform those made by Pathscale, the leading AMD64 compiler suite, on Intel's own processors (even though Pathscale only supports SSE2). However, neither could outperform IBM XL Fortran on the Xserve's 2.0GHz IBM PPC970FX processors with AltiVec units.

      At less than an eighth of the price of a Sun workstation, you can purchase a dual 2.5GHz G5, which lacks many of the amenities of Sun Blades such as ECC RAM and 10,000RPM FC-AL hard drives, the model runs considerably faster at a fraction of the price, and the system can double as a user desktop with both Unix (i.e. scientific computing programs) and (otherwise) Windows amenities such as Microsoft Office and Adobe tools (Photoshop/Illustrator/Acrobat).

      For any role I can imagine for a dual Opteron workstation, I can see a G5 in the same role for a considerably cheaper price. Furthermore, I can see a G5 outperforming an Opteron in any of those roles, because in virtually all of them (scientific computing, medical computing, multimedia/3D modelling/video production) the AltiVec unit on the G5 will be extremely beneficial, whereas Opteron has no good vector units for these purposes (Opteron SSE2 is slower than its FPU, SSE is only 64-bits, doesn't support double precision floating point or the multitude of operations AltiVec supports such as trig functions needed for FFT/DCT transforms)

      I believe that next to the new Nocona Xeon-based Dell Precision workstations (with SSE3 which is comparable to AltiVec), Apple has the cheapest and most powerful Tier 1 workstation offering in the form of the dual 2.5GHz G5, at least for the roles a high end dual processor 64-bit workstation is intended to serve.

      • At less than an eighth of the price of a Sun workstation, you can purchase a dual 2.5GHz G5

        $8,695.00 for this dual Opteron Sun w2100z. Please, point me to this amazing deal that gives you dual 2.5GHz G5's for about $1000. And with comparable specs would be nice - like 4G ECC RAM, Quadro-class video and so on.

        For any role I can imagine for a dual Opteron workstation, I can see a G5 in the same role for a considerably cheaper price.

        Yeah, you're trolling, I know. But here's a question: do you know what t

  • Here Comes the SUN...again (Score:3, Informative)

    by Eberlin (570874) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:18PM (#10646968) Homepage
    Are we talking about SUN the hardware company or SUN the Solaris folks? Hey, aren't they the ones that bought out the folks that eventually led to Star Office? Wait, I think they mentioned Java Desktop so is the compile-once-run-anywhere SUN?

    Oh, Java Desktop is Linux with some java-related enhancements? Boy, these guys must really like Linux to be using it. Didn't they buy Cobalt before...and those things used Linux? I'm glad a large company is getting behind Linux in such a big way.

    Wait, now I'm confused...they don't LIKE Linux?

    Anyone know what SUN does for a living? Reminds me of a slacker surfer dude with all these different "money-making" schemes they keep pitching. Diversifying sounds more and more like treading water.

    • Actually SUN likes Linux just fine. Very happy with the decisions buyers are making with their hardware and a Linux OS, and with how Linux is shaping up in the world around them, actually. They just don't like Red Hat. Which, say it with me now, is *not* Linux. They are a distro. The CTO has some quotes running around the web about it. I think Red Hat stepped on one too many toes at SUN or something.

    • No, Java Desktop IS Linux. Its based on SuSE 8.1. The next release will be based on SuSe 9.1.

  • Don't call this a comeback, been here for years (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ebooher (187230) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:19PM (#10646986) Homepage Journal

    The title is a little interesting to me. The Return of the SUN Workstation. Does this mean to say that the current versions of UltraSPARC and Sun Blade systems shouldn't be considered workstations? What do we (as a /. community) describe workstation as, anyway? Do we mean to say really high end 3D work in CAD/CAM, etc? Is the lowly XP machine I'm forced to use at work a "workstation" because it's where I get work done?

    The new Java Workstation series with the AMD Opteron processor is a pretty neat box. Hit SUN.com and download their PDF's on the machine. One includes a diagram/schematic of the motherboard. The motherboard is the mainboard and daughterboard. The daughterboard happens to house the PCI bus and associated gear as well as the SCSI adapter onboard. I wonder why. Will SUN later introduce a different daughterboard with some other version of expansion upgradability? Maybe with SATA instead of SCSI? Just a way to keep the mainboard more flexible?

    It also needs to be said that this isn't just a dual Opteron machine. There is a single proc version of the motherboard. They are also as full on x86 as you can get. No really out there ROMs or chips that only SUN knows about, because they are rated to run Windows as well.

    So the units will run all x86 OS's without a hitch, they just happen to have some SUN engineering behind them as well as the SUN name. I think the main push for the Opteron was that they have an entry level server built around it. SUN knows that not everybody buys really high end multi $$K machines and that some data centers only need one or two sub $1K servers.

    Is this why SUN is so vocal about their new found friends at Microsoft? Because they knew they would be releasing x86 gear that would be certified for Windows Server products and wanted to make sure the world knew that you didn't have to get your WinBoxes from Dell or HP anymore?

  • Sun may survive this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RealAlaskan (576404) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:21PM (#10646996) Homepage Journal
    Sun used to be all about high-quality hardware, where cost took a backseat to reliability. I wonder if they'll be able to keep their reputation for quality and support now that they're competing with HP and Walmart at the low end?

    Another post pointed out that SGI started to self-destruct when they started selling Windows NT boxes. At least Sun is peddling these with Solaris, so they aren't literally going into the Dell/Walmart end of the market.

  • Sounds like a good linux platform (Score:3, Interesting)

    by argoff (142580) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:22PM (#10647011)

    Would you be surprised to hear Sun is the lowest cost Tier 1 dual-Opteron provider?

    Yes I would be. Anyhow, sounds like a good reason to get one, format the drive - wipe solaris and install Linux on it to get all the apps. Thanks Sun

      • This [znark.com] is what I used to install Solaris from a Slackware system. The instructions are for Solaris 8 and if I remember there was a little problem, but between this and the script that is on the install CD to setup a Solaris Netboot server, you should have enough documentation to get it running.

  • Blech... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Krimsen (26685) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:23PM (#10647018) Homepage
    Why not get even cheaper [ebsinc.com]!

  • w2100z. w00t! (Score:5, Funny)

    by micromoog (206608) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:23PM (#10647025)
    Every time I see w2100z, my internal 1337-sp34k decoder kicks on. Then I realize it's the actual product name.
  • Would you be surprised to hear Sun is the lowest cost Tier 1 dual-Opteron provider?

    Yes I would be surprised, and I don't even know what that is! Wow!

  • Dual G5 Comparison? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RAMMS+EIN (578166) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:29PM (#10647085) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how these babies stack up against the dual G5 machines Apple has been offering. Looking at the specs, the Mac looks like a better deal. Upgrading the memory to 4 GB brings the price to $5,249.00, just a bit below the white box alternative Anand proposes for the w2100z (the w2100z itself costing some $8600). Of course, price is only one aspect.

  • Cheaper than IBM? So what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BobaFett (93158) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @04:34PM (#10647139) Homepage
    It's not IBM Sun has to compete against with these boxes. It's Dell. Dell sells the 64-bit workstations with Intel's Opteron clones, even with Linux preloaded, and beats Sun by at least 30%. It's even worse if you configure them with more RAM: Sun is so used to charging outrageous prices for their workstation RAM that they just can't turn on a dime. Dell wants about $1200 for the extra 4G of RAM (to bring the total to 8G), Sun at least twice as much.

    It's good that Sun realized that they have to move to commodity hardware if they want to survive, now we're waiting for them to have an epiphany that commodity hardware sells at commodity prices.

  • Remember the 386i, Suns first flirtation with x86? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by G4from128k (686170) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @05:06PM (#10647498)
    This machine isn't Sun's first x86 machine. The 386i [sites.inka.de] was an early attempt by Sun to use a cheap Intel processor to make a lower-price Unix machine. All of this was before Sun abandoned 3rd-party processors (Motorola and Intel) to concentrate on the SPARC architecture.

    • Re:but who spends US$8700 on a work station? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ebooher (187230) on Wednesday October 27 2004, @05:50PM (#10647927) Homepage Journal

      Well, the tip top of the line is $8700.00, but they start out much cheaper than that.

      w1100z

      Opteron Model 144 (Single)

      1 MB L2 Cache

      Quadro NVS280 Graphics

      512 MB RAM

      80 GB HDD

      GigE

      5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X

      DVD-ROM/CD-RW

      $1,495.00

      Opteron Model 150 (Single)

      1 MB L2 Cache

      Quadro FX500 Graphics

      1 GB RAM

      80 GB HDD

      GigE

      5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X

      DVD-ROM/CD-RW

      $2,095.00

      w2100z

      Opteron Model 246 (Dual)

      1 MB L2 Cache

      Quadro NVS280 Graphics

      2 GB RAM

      73 GB HDD (SCSI)

      GigE

      5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X

      DVD-ROM/CD-RW

      $4,695.00

      Opteron Model 250 (Dual)

      1 MB L2 Cache

      Quadro FX3000 Graphics

      4 GB RAM

      73 GB HDD (SCSI)

      GigE

      5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X

      DVD-ROM/CD-RW

      $8,695.00

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