[CentOS] [OT] SPARC platforms -- WAS: Hot swap CPU

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 09:24 -0500, alex at milivojevic.org wrote:
> Not defending Sun, just to put things into perspective for folks not familiar
> with Sun hardware (since Peter forgot to mention couple of facts).
> ... cut ...

Not only that, but people forget that SPARC is not sold by just Sun.
SPARC is an IEEE standard licensed under "fair and non-discriminatory"
terms.  The SPARC ISA and most architectural details are freely
available.

The _majority_ of my Solaris/SPARC experience in more recent years has
been on Fujitsu/HAL solutions.  I not only prefer the Fujitsu/HAL
products over Sun, I not only prefer Fujitsu's "openness" to support
SPARC solutions with non-Fijitsu networking, storage, etc... attached
(whereas Sun likes 100% Sun equipment from a support perspective), but
Fujitsu has taken over packaging design and fabrication of SPARCs for
Sun itself.  I.e., Sun used to design their own SPARC packages and TI
was their foundary, but Fujitsu has almost always designed their own
SPARC modules/ daughtercards, and fabbed them themselves.  Sun even
sells Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER products on their site now.

sun4u (UltraSPARC) is planned through UltraSPARC V, with UltraSPARC III
(and lightweight IIIi) and IV available today.  The 1-2 way UltraSPARC
IIIi is more comparable to the cost/design of the Pentium III and IV, as
well as the Xeon.  The UltraSPARC III and IV, and their platform, are
_clearly_superior_ to even OEM proprietary NUMA Xeon implementations
(you really have to start looking at proprietary IA-64/Itanium II to get
a good comparison).

But the design of the Opteron is why Sun is moving forth with it's move.
The typical UltraSPARC NUMA/SBUS server architecture really doesn't
offer much over Opteron in a 2-8 way.  And to be honest, Solaris is
probably the most "mature" OS for Opteron 200/800 right now, given its
experience on partial mesh interconnected systems.  Linux will get
there, but it takes time and experience on a platform like SPARC
(Windows never well, not even thanx to SGI's past, although brief,
donations).


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
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