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A modest proposalA modest proposalPosted Apr 7, 2009 14:50 UTC (Tue) by sbishop (guest, #33061)In reply to: A modest proposal by njs Parent article: IBM Lets Sun Set (Linux Journal)
They seem like a perfect fit for the software half of Sun. Do you think that they would want the hardware half too? Perhaps they could put together a three-way deal with a company interested in the hardware. I don't know how often that kind of thing happens.
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A modest proposal Posted Apr 7, 2009 17:21 UTC (Tue) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]
Ever since Sun GPLed their T1 and T2 CPUs, arguably a big chunk of the hardware IP has become indistinguishable from software IP. Not sure if Red Hat could exploit that - I haven't heard of any revolutionary stuff coming out of the community for the processor, nor have I seen anyone upload any variants of the processor to Open Cores. Mind you, Sun aren't exactly pushing the concept a whole lot.
A modest proposal Posted Apr 8, 2009 19:16 UTC (Wed) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]
Sun GPLed the HDL code for the CPUs, not the synthesis results, nor the masks, nor the process hacks. A bunch of Verilog does not a product make. If all it took to compete in that space was a text editor then Intel wouldn't be kicking everyone's butts to the extent that they are.
And, frankly, the Niagra CPUs aren't such great shakes. 8 small/slow (i.e. shallow pipeline, ~1GHz) cores with wide (4-way) threaded dispatch vs. 4 big/fast (deep pipeline, 3GHz) core with 2-way hyperthreading. Meh. The Intel offering is just as good even in the most parallel workloads, and *much* faster for typical software. Both AMD and IBM have more compelling CPUs, IMHO.
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