After Sun goes out (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 2, 2003 22:40 UTC (Thu) by StevenCole (guest, #3068)
In reply to: After Sun goes out (NewsForge) by proski
Parent article: After Sun goes out (NewsForge)

Bill Joy did leave recently and this big news on Monday resulted in stories like this.

After Sun goes out (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 3, 2003 2:57 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (5 responses)

From the second link:

"In a very candid and unusual letter, Milunovich urged Sun to cut 5,000 to 7,000 jobs to speed a return to profitability and recommended that it eliminate its Sparc, Mad Hatter, and Java product lines."

One has to wonder, what in the world would they sell if they eliminated Sparc and Java?

I recommend that MSFT eliminate Windows and Office. :-)

After Sun goes out (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 3, 2003 3:55 UTC (Fri) by StevenCole (guest, #3068) [Link] (4 responses)

From this Info World article:

In his letter, dated Oct. 2, Merrill Lynch's Steven Milunovich recommends Sun de-emphasize its Sparc hardware architecture and focus on the Intel x86 platform, spin off its crown jewel Java programming language, and pass on battling Microsoft on the desktop with the newly announced Java Desktop System, formerly known as "Mad Hatter."

Remember, this is Merrill Lynch talking, and if you can't trust their always trustworthy advice, whose can you trust?

After Sun goes out (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 3, 2003 12:48 UTC (Fri) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link] (3 responses)

C'mon off it - AMD & Intel seem to be fighting to get their sales of 64-bit systems into double figures. Compaq killed Alpha so Sparc is just about the only realistic choice for genuine 64 bit hardware. It ain't as good as Alpha but it ain't bad either, just way too expensive & too tied to a proprietary OS.

Intel seem to be in denial that the (server) world is rapidly approaching the need for > 4 GByte address spaces. AMD simply don't seem to have the clout. In any case IA32 architecture - which is really an inefficient kludge from the original 8086 CPU, now 25 years old - can't last forever.

IMO getting out of Sparc and into Intel architecture would be the worst possible thing Sun could do i.e. shooting themselves in both feet & emptying the magazine into the space between their ears.

Sun don't have the right model for me, but they do seem to be able to shift Sparc boxes. Good luck to them, as long as they keep out of bed with SCO.

After Sun goes out (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 3, 2003 15:16 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (1 responses)

Intel seem to be in denial that the (server) world is rapidly approaching the need for > 4 GByte address spaces.

I'm pretty uninformed when it comes to high end hardware, but I'm vaguely aware that Intel is using a 36-bit address bus on the Xeon, which should increase the address space from 4 GB to 64 GB. Is this correct, or am I "remembering" something that never happened?

PAE mode

Posted Oct 3, 2003 16:11 UTC (Fri) by StevenCole (guest, #3068) [Link]

The 36-bit PAE mode has been around on Intel IA-32 for a long time. Here is a rather old exposition on The 64GB memory thing. Keep in mind that on 32-bit systems, processes usually only have access to 3GB on typically configured linux kernels, although an experimental 4GB/4GB split option is available on the 2.6.0-test -mm series kernels.

Interestingly, the default Microsoft split is 2GB/2GB, with 3GB/1GB being an option if you've paid more at the pump. More details are here.

64 bit processors

Posted Oct 5, 2003 9:31 UTC (Sun) by chenno (guest, #15744) [Link]

There's also IBM's G5. Now that Apple dumped Motorola, they stand a chance to stay ahead of the race.

I'm sad every time a chip architecture is dumped, but Sparc really seems to be lagging in processing power.