Sun Sacks UltraSparc V and 3300 Employees 408
bender writes "According to this article, Sun Microsystems has cancelled the next generation UltraSparc V processor even though the chip had already taped out. Perhaps this has something to do with the recent partnerships with AMD and Fujitsu?"
Worse financial situation than we think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well one thing's for sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't that just say it all?
Beginning of the End (Score:3, Insightful)
Sun cannot compete with Linux/AMD64. Hopefully Microsoft did not buy IP ownership rights for Java, because Sun ought to open-source it before the company expires.
Tad bit misleading (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, I'm very happy to see that they are not planning on putting out an interim processor. I wouldn't take kindly to that as a consumer or enterprise buyer (I've been both).
As a consumer, I don't want to buy something with only a 2 year shelf life (less used product will be available in the future). As an Enterprise buyer - they won't have all the bugs out due to low volume.
Re:Worse financial situation than we think? (Score:5, Insightful)
--
Retail Retreat [retailretreat.com]
Re:"Stupid! You so STUPID!!!" (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that fast, buddy (Score:5, Insightful)
I once worked for US West (a local phone company) and they had entire ROOMS full of nothing but SUN equipment - actually running. I worked in IT for them and I still can't imagine what all of these systems did.
Anyway, the article is pretty clear that the new Chip platform is simply being eliminated because it's a needless step inbetween their IV and the new processors that are lining up for release... in 2 years.
So I guess this means I'm feeding a troll that didn't read the article.
Sun excised the SPARC VI proc and decided on Rock (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Worse financial situation than we think? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Bummer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its just the Ultra-V that is dead (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is good, it means we still have 2 choices for desktops and servers out there (MIPS are long dead, and it seems ARM's are going to be only seen in embedded devices and handhelds... )
Not what it looks like (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sun excised the SPARC VI proc and decided on Ro (Score:5, Insightful)
CPU doesn't make the system (Score:4, Insightful)
SGI did this with Pentiums (II's or III's if I remember correctly), though a lot depends on marketing which has not beeb SGI's strong point as of late so don't site SGI as an anecdote to predict Suns failure also.
Hooray (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and don't forget to "keep your skills current."
"So, what was your last job?"
"I was a microprocessor designer."
"What makes you think you're qualified to work at Lying Rat Bastards Inc.?"
"I have a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Cal Tech"
"Well, unless you graduated last year, I'm afraid your skills aren't current. Thanks for stopping by."
Re:Worse financial situation than we think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Short sighted plans (Score:5, Insightful)
On the surface it seems silly to cancel a chip that was basically done. The vast majority of money put toward a chip is in the design, not the manufacturing. But when looking at the potential of having 7 different chip architectures in the marketplace at the same time in a couple of years, it really makes sense to simplify the product line a bit. Keep the tried-and-true, and finish the biggest capability jump. They just cut out an intermediate step.
I'm staying with US III machines for the next couple of years. In two years, say there was a new chip out that was only a littel better than the US III, and the Niagara coming out within months... I'd certainly decide to wait for Niagara and make the biggest jump possible (so I could sit on it a while). I suspect they'd have hardly sold any USV machines.
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
However, it's too late for mindshare -- the market now thinks of Linux as the hot new thing (rather than risky and hackerish as people did 5 years ago), and it's unlikely that an improved version of Solaris x86 will change that.
As a side note, Solaris x86's worst enemy was always Solaris Admins (who love Sparcs, the firmware, etc). They bashed hard on the product, when they could have been it's biggest proponent.
Re:Bummer... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it wasn't the processor specifically, but THE ARCHITECTURE BUILT AROUND IT? For crying out loud, if the supporting architecture doesn't actually support you then you're not doing so well.
Additionally, the UltraSPARC processors weren't as fast as x86 but they scale much better and have no end in sight, whereas the x86 can't compete in large multiprocessor systems and are starting to show future caps in terms of power, heat, and size. Sun isn't as concerned with higher speeds so they don't get whacked with the same problems, but make a more efficient processor.
UltraSPARC being canceled is actually a good thing. It lets Sun concentrate on making good machines, and leaves the CPUs to companies who are good at making them.
The UltraSPARC isn't being cancelled, the mark V is being cancelled.
As well, who should we point to as good at making processors? Intel created a very poor design which they been able to keep pushing on quickly. They stay focused on releasing newer and faster models constantly, but the design is much poorer and has to constantly kludge itself to keep going. Intel captured the low end market and used that to push itself into higher end systems, but they hit bottlenecks that a better design could have avoided. They are not someone I would hold up as an example to be followed.
Re:Closer than you think (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not that fast, buddy (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, SperryUnivac is still around surviving on maintenance fees, but nobody considers them "alive".
Re:Not what it looks like (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think you know how well regarded Sun is in the server environment. Linux is young in the server environment, and the only reason Linux is favorable to Sun is beacause Linux runs on everything. So you must be talking about Sun hardwardware vs. x86 arch.
And yes, while cheap, the x86 platform has a number of shortcomings when you are doing heavy lifting.
At work we just bought yet another Sun workstation, and when you are sharing a box with ~50 other people, you start to see the different between hardware. And yes I daily work on Linux/x86, Linux/pa-risc(HP), HP-UX/pa-risc, HP-UX/IA64, and Sun/sparc. And yes I can tell when I run on the sun. So you might say, "throw more cheap boxen at the problem", which is a good solution a lot of times, but then again there are situations when it just makes things more complicated and complex.
You must be totally ignorant of Sun's position. And your assertion that they move to Win64/.net? Care to back that up? Yeah, because you have no idea what you are talking about.
Not surprising. (Score:2, Insightful)
Where I work we used Sun because of performance in the beginning, then because Solaris was superior to Windows. With the advent of Linux, the only reason we've kept them around is 64-bit address space. I really don't see what they offer over a server-class Athlon-64 running Linux. Except a price premium.
As far as services are concerned, they really put a big hole in their own foot. The multiplatform nature of Java prevents them from keeping a vendor-lock on customers the way IBM has with its mainframes. We can trasition any recent project to other hardware at any time.
Re:Not that fast, buddy (Score:4, Insightful)
As somebody who worked at USWest/Qwest, I can now tell you what they did: Improve each directors empire.
Sad thing is, there is more truth in this than humour.
But you are right. Back in the mid 80's to early 90's, I was pushing MS over IBM as I thought they could kill IBM (the evil empire who had a monopoly on the industry and was killing everything that they set their evil eye on; sound familiar). I was pretty positive that IBM would die in a few years as their stock declined. But they are stil here (thinkfully) due to the all the hardware that they were selling and all the agreements that were in place. Sun is now in the same place and they will simply have to weather it.
Not sure what to think. (Score:3, Insightful)
If this isn't a kind of decline for Sun, I certainly hope they have one hell of a plan up their sleeves.
bullshit, bullshit, bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
the sparc _needs_ hardware contexts and register windows because it has a zillion registers to save and reload.
the x86 on the other hand has very few registers, so saving and restoring them on context switches is very cheap.
and since x86 cpus are so much faster than sparc now, sparc gets left in the dust.
Re:Worse financial situation than we think? (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to Microsoft, linux and the OSS talk a good game, but it's sun fighting the fight.
You think microsoft was going to find a way to kill linux before? Imagine how much easier it will be now without all of sun's money and time spent in the court system.
The OSS made a big mistake alienating Sun that is going to hurt them. The more and more I read the various OSS 'news' sources, the more I think that somoene, maybe IBM, has gotten the OSS community to take on their fight aginst. MS.
Every one applauds IBM for their fight against SCO, an annoyance, and ignores Sun for their fight against microsoft.
THIS IS what their customers want. Sun has always been criticized for not listening to their customers. Their customers want Sun to stop fighting MS and start working with them on better ingegration. So they put asside some of their principles and work things out with Microsoft. And now the OSS community criticizes them about it.
Let's see, customers on one hand, a bunch of ungrateful people on the other that no matter how much time and money you invest in them, how much software you give them, they just keep asking for more and more and trying to stab you in the bback whenever they can.
Wake up peaple, if it's such a big deal now that Sun isn't fighting microsoft, why didn't you make it a big deal when Sun WAS fighting microsoft tooth and nail. And in most cases winning.
Re:Worse financial situation than we think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Worse financial situation than we think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun has done a huge effort, trying to make people open their eyes (Perhaps a little too much, with McNealy alienating most people with his comments), and they never had any serious backing by the OSS crowd. Damn shame that they've had to fold, and damn shame that people are now complaining that they've "given up on their principles" - Geez... Why didn't people support those principles in the first place?
If you can't walk the walk, don't talk the talk
Dilbert's boss logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess Sun is following their way.
BTW, their processors have sucked for quite a while now, they were getting server performance from "the power of many" (i.e. by putting lots of processors in SMP or SMP/NUMA configurations). AMD's Opteron beats the crap out of a Sparc IV (with server benchmarks), it's just that there aren't solutions for more than 8 chips on a board for AMD (AFAIK)
Re:Not what it looks like (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is bad for... Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
The cancellation of UltraSparc V is probably a good thing for everyone. US V was to be a new design, not fully compatible with the old ones, but instead leaning towards Itanic. This is good, mainly because it means that they will continue to focus on Sparc compatible chips. This means more stable hardware for us. Also this means that they will continue the focus towards multithread/multicore chips - which are terrific for server usage. KISS design, the way it should be done.
The alliance with Fujitsu is definitely a good thing. Fujitsu has great potential as a chip maker, and their Sparc CPU's are just as good as those made by Sun. What's bad is the supporting logic (Fujitsu-Siemens sparcs have limited LOM and are more expensive). This "union" if it happened would probably mean that we would see future sparcs with the best from both worlds.
Even the MS "pact" is not bad. It gets more money to sun, so that they can continue with the work, and shows us the perspective of using Sun instead of MS software for our server, while still being able to support MS clients. This would allow us to phase out MS from the corporate server pool easily, and also open room for Linux and other unices on the corporate desktop. Weather we like it or not MS is the current office standard and it will take us a lot of work to get it out of there. Not for the "office" (i.e. word, excel) but for the "groupware" software as the main backbone (outlook, exchange, and the new products).
The only "bad" thing is the layoff of 3000+ workers from the US, and the potential move of sun's cpu production from T.I. (and the US) to Fujitsu. And this is noting bad for the computing industry. It is bad for the US economy, but that's just the US. The rest of the world - and the unix community will probably end up benefiting from this.
Re:H-1B Fallacy: SPARC64-V versus UltraSPARC-V (Score:2, Insightful)
This observation proves the fact that H-1B workers are not needed to create high-technology.
Neither are Americans...
Suns blur future (Score:2, Insightful)
Rock will have the a ability to create two threads from one (some sort of "thread level paralellism", besides the clasical ILP), in order to maximize CPU utilization. Dont forget that Solaris has the most advanced thread implementation on the planet. They will laverage this advantage.
As for workstations, chances are that they move back to a third party processor (probably Opteron) as they did with the original Sun 1 (a Motorola 68.000 based workstation), back to the roots baby!
Im really expecting wide Solaris Opteron support from ISVs, since this will easy worstation deployment for end users. Nowadays, for Linux, you have some ISVs that only supports RedHat 7.3 (Landmark, etc.), while others supports SuSE, forcing end-users to have dual-boot or vmware implementations in order to mantain ISV support for the high-priced software (petrol apps, etc.). Whats even worst, is that is common for new libraries to be incompatible with old ones (glibc 6.22 and 6.23 and more) what forces ISVs to perform extensive re-certification. Thanks to binary application guaranty (http://www.sun.com/service/support/sw_only/solar
I still thinks that Sun drop the ball with many bad choices, but replacing US-V to with a extremely different processor (as Rock) is the best way to cut through the chat. Either Sun will raise or fall from this desition. If it really works, a Rock + "asynchroneus logic" processor will position them on a hole new game, forcing all other competitors to perform an expensive (time & money) catch-up.
If it fails... I doubt services will save them. As my father once told me when he was CEO of a service (telco) company "To the customers eye, service is always bad. After they get used with any new improvement, they will start to complain again requesting some further improvement, until their complain is solved, then the hole thing starts over again." Thats why long term out-surcing contracts tend to end really baddly. Is not the quality of the service, is human psiquis...
Thats why Sun, beeing a engineers company, will be far better with serving value added products (with huge differentiators) than services.
I once thoug Sun would ship a 100% GPL server, but they didnt understand the market impact that kind of product will create. Just think it for a minute, SPARC is the only widely used 64-bits open processor (http://www.sparc.org/faq.html), just GPL the UltraSPARC-IIe processor, add Linux on top of it and you are done, the ony 100% GPL server on the planet!!
It doesnt matter if it sells well or not (look at Linux on zSeries), you are the only system provider that can guarantee the customer wont be lokc-in. If every-thing goes wrong and Sun dies, you can still create faster UltraSPARC servers, without any restriction that commonly applies to Intel clones (Intel sueing every x86 clone maker, etc.).
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I very much doubt that company would total net reduction of 30% over next financial year. If they tried, they might as well liquidate company's assets right now and give proceeds to shareholders. That's where Sun's current value is (share value fairly close to book value, that is); to get more share value via growth, company HAS to continue spending on R&D... and that can not be done by firing 30% of employees during next year. It's hard enough to grow by 30% over couple of years; reducing by that amount in one year is only done on death spirals of companies when all other options have been exhausted. It's like amputating your left leg, instead of liposuction, to lose more weight.
Re:Worse financial situation than we think? (Score:3, Insightful)
How is sun spending money to defend itself against Microsoft's misuse of Java that was in violation of their licensing creating an alibi for McNealy? Same goes for spending money and time in all the anti-trust cases against MS?
"Sun's situation had nothing to do with Microsoft, their market is eroding because of Linux and cheap commodity hardware. They would be in serious trouble even if Linux had never been written, the cost of an Intel box plus a traditional Unix license is much less than the cost of the competing Sun box. "
Actually, long before Linux was close to a viable alternative, NT was hurting Sun in the middle tier server area. Microsoft also made it harder for them to integrate their products and services with Microsoft's products and services. People were switch from Sun to intel boxes because they already had windows on the desktop and Microsoft was able to lock out other vendors and user that to their advantage in establishing a server OS.
If you look at the current pricing for sun hardware, the pricing isn't much different than comparable systems from commodity vendors. And by comparable I mean 64bit processor based systems. Sun offers some AMD boxes but their cheapest 1u server is under 1k and uses an ultrasparc processor and runs solaris. Sure, you can make a server for a few hundred bucks but it's not the same class in terms of a reliable and easy to upgrade (while still in production) architecture. A lot of people were going to lower end systems that weren't made by Sun. Not because Sun was too expensive, but because the offereings from Sun weren't aimed at this market. They are now offering products aimed for those markets and their prices are comparable. Sun started to realize this when they first came out with their Ultra line of workstations. Many people were using them as servers and not workstations. They were a little slow to get the message but they're strategy has changed a bit since then.
"Sun has been going 'upmarket' for the past ten years. Read Clayton Christiansen and 'The Innovator's Solution' to understand why that is a long term strategic disaster. The market for large servers was a temporary phenomena that was always going to end up being turned into a commodity. Ten years ago a workstation was essential if you were going to do serious academic research in the comp/sci field. Today an Intel or AMD box is 'good enough' for 98% of users. "
Is that why IBM still makes a ton of money of their mainframes and their sales are still rising? And why the majority of corporate data is still on a mainframe? This type of comment comes out a lot. It seems that many in the slashdot community only think in terms of small business and their one or two webservers that host their business and ignore the corporate market. Maybe it's just because running 41,500 virtual linux servers on one mainframe instead of 41,500 individual servers doesn't give you the opportunity to say "boxen" in alll your /. posts :)
Okay, something I just don't get (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're talking about the cryptic "IP cross-licensing agreement", then why aren't you spitting the same venom at Apple? Because they signed such an agreement with Microsoft as well when they settled their lawsuits [msu.edu] against Microsoft in 1997. I don't see this cross-licensing as "working with". This is just an "okay, no more lawsuits" agreement. Sun hasn't given up on fighting MS, they've just given up on fighting them in the courtroom.
Am I missing something?
Re:Worse financial situation than we think? (Score:1, Insightful)