x86 costs and the switch to Linux [LWN.net]

x86 costs and the switch to Linux

Posted Nov 16, 2009 1:08 UTC (Mon) by motk (subscriber, #51120)
In reply to: x86 costs and the switch to Linux by Cato
Parent article: Notes from the LF End User Summit

This is kind of offset by Sun's price-dumping of their expensive hardware; Big Finance likes free stuff. There's also the odd idea that Solaris/Sun admin knowledge is cheap and plentiful.

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x86 costs and the switch to Linux

Posted Nov 16, 2009 7:19 UTC (Mon) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

Interesting, but that's surely a sign of desperation to make some sales and doesn't change the fundamental economics. If HP/Dell can profitably sell a $20K Intel server at that equates to 144 SPARC CPUs of some years ago, Sun can't keep on discounting forever.

Of course, Sun does sell x86 servers a lot these days, but I couldn't find a 24 core Xeon server on their website yet, and once a company has a choice of x86 vendors they won't only look at Sun.

x86 costs and the switch to Linux

Posted Nov 19, 2009 20:28 UTC (Thu) by harlekyn (guest, #9207) [Link]

Seems you under-estimate the Sun portfolio.

The X4440 is a 4 socket AMD server and supports up to 24 cores: http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4440/

The Intel equivalent is the X4450: http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4450/

But you'd rather want to get a Nehalem-powered Intel box. Only available as dual-sockets at the moment, they still give the Dunnington a run for its money. An example would be the Sun X4270: http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4270/

x86 costs and the switch to Linux

Posted Nov 19, 2009 21:07 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

you missed their X4600 8 socket AMD server listed as supporting up to 32 cores: http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4600/index.xml

x86 costs and the switch to Linux

Posted Nov 19, 2009 21:58 UTC (Thu) by harlekyn (guest, #9207) [Link]

At least from a CPU performance perspective, it's about as fast as the newer system with four hexa-cores. AMD has not only added 2 more cores, but added further optimizations to the chip (e.g. an improved snoop filter).

Sun Fire X4600 M2 (AMD Opteron 8384 2.7GHz), 32 cores: 386 SPECint_rate2006
Sun Fire X4440 (AMD Opteron 8435 2.6GHz), 24 cores: 377 SPECint_rate2006

For the time being, you only have to get the 8-socket X4600 M2 if you need more than 256 GB of memory in a single box. Once AMD releases the hexa-cores for the 8-socket boxes, there's one more compelling reason. Such a 48-core box sounds...sweet :)