Is the Sparc T4 Too Little Too Late? 128
packetrat writes "Ars Technica reports on Monday's launch of the Sparc T4, and how it finally (nearly 20 years after everyone else) brings out-of-order execution to Sun Sparc ... er, Oracle Sparc. But the benchmarks that Oracle has thrown up (surprise) are a smokescreen for the fact that the processor is still woefully behind state of the art, and it serves mostly as a placeholder to keep the remaining Sparc user base from defecting to Intel — even as Oracle is selling systems based on Intel and Oracle Linux. With the right benchmarks, my minivan outperforms a Maserati. The T4 is a minivan."
car analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
With the right benchmarks, my minivan outperforms a Maserati. The T4 is a minivan.
When you're moving lots and lots of boxes, then yes, a minivan does outperform a Maserati. It's a pretty good analogy IMHO.
As Seymour Cray noted: Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system.
Personally I've always found SPARC boxes to be good with I/O.