[rescue] SunBlade 2000 vs SunBlade 2500 vs Ultra 45

[Andrew Gaylard]

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 7:28 PM, Sanford Barton<xc68000 at gmail.com> 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.

I'm not convinced that these are the last days of SPARC.  Consider that:

1. SPARC is still achieving good benchmarks; see
http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/why_is_1_6_ghz
(warnings about trusting benchmarks notwithstanding, etc., etc.)

2. Fujitsu is building a supercomputer based on SPARCs:
http://unixconsole.blogspot.com/2009/05/sparc64-strikes-back-on-super-computi
ng.html

3. Now that the CMT SPARC stuff is open-sourced, a huge number of
bright young students are messing around with it.  The odds are good
that some of them will come up with big ideas that will bring about
future innovations.

The real question is, "would you consider building new stuff on xyx?"

Would I build a new system on Itanium/HPUX?  No way.
Would I build a new system on POWER/AIX?  Probably not.
Would I build a new system on SPARC/Solaris?  Sure.

Of course, it's not only about speed; these things also matter to me:

- the overall hardware design is solid;
- Solaris is (IMHO) the best of the commercial Unices;
- OBP is brilliant by comparison with any other firmware.

- Andrew