[rescue] SunBlade 2000 vs SunBlade 2500 vs Ultra 45

[Phil Stracchino]

Sanford Barton wrote:
> I know its a controversial issue but I really think were seeing the
> last days of sparc processors.  Even Itanium2 is struggling against
> the latest core2/xeon designs and HP/HP-UX is fading just as quickly
> as Sun is.  At least Sun has an x86 option.

Itanium, realistically, sucked from day one.  It cannot reasonably be
described as having ever been a successful processor.  It managed to
find a small number of customers in a few niches (mostly not on actual
technical merit, but because the customers drank Intel's kool-aid) and
that's about the best that can be said of it IMHO.  Long on complexity,
short on bang-for-the-buck.  (And I'm told by people in a position to
know that it's a nightmare to write a compiler for it.)

The processor family whose loss I really lament is Alpha.


> Probably these machines will eventually be looked at as being close to
> a pinnacle of the Sun/Sparc workstation legacy.  For enthusiasts,
> grabbing one now wouldn't be a bad thing.

I'd grab a U45 if I could afford to right now.  But if I had that kind
of money floating around, there are far more urgent things I need it for.



-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.