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more on Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | CNET News.com
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 13:49:53 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <shap () eros-os org> Date: June 5, 2005 1:28:56 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: Ip ip <ip () v2 listbox com>Subject: Re: [IP] more on Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | CNET News.com
On Sun, 2005-06-05 at 09:28 -0400, David Farber wrote:
Just a few details that seem to have been missed in this discussion so far -- 1) Sun is certainly not abandoning SPARC. The 90nm US IV+ will be in the market later this year and "Niagra" shows up in early 2006 to be followed by new Fujitsu designs, etc...
Just to clear the air, I did not mean to suggest that Sun will cease production of SPARC chips this year or next. What I do expect is that Sun will formally discontinue SPARC development within the next 4-5 years, and will begin transitioning customers to AMD64 comfortably before that timeframe. When the announcement will come is a bit up in the air. Sun certainly will *not* abandon existing customers, and will do everything possible to continue to support them. One reason for this is that Sun's attempts to develop high performance SPARC chips have failed. For obvious reasons, I won't disclose my sources, but it should be suggestive to Sun watchers that 100% of Andy Bechtolsheim's attention has remained on AMD64-based machines after his company was acquired by Sun. I would cite the name of the emulator company that supplied the dynamic translation technology, but I'm not entirely sure that this has been announced publicly yet. Aside from the issue of application compatibility (which is very important), the SPARC architecture has become a significant drain on Sun's financial resources at a time when they cannot afford to continue to invest in a dead end design. The benchmark numbers for SPARC-based designs are quite poor. In any given implementation technology, if you evaluate processors on MIPS per transistor OR on the performance of the fastest available part, the SPARC simply isn't competitive. Lately it has trailed the pack. So turn Mark Stahlman's statement around: if Sun continues to invest in a part that exhibits a factor of 2 to 4 loss in relative performance against competitors, why on earth would anybody continue to buy their products? Why would analysts support this drain on the company's resources when a transitionable alternative exists? Why would shareholders? Sun's sustainable advantages at this time lie in a very good I/O subsystem architecture and (arguably) the most robust and mature UNIX variant available. SPARC is a very expensive distraction, and the company can no longer afford to indulge it. Scott McNealy is fond of telling Sun employees that Sun's cash on hand exceeds debt. This simply wasn't true the last time he said it -- I looked at the SEC filings and checked. The accurate statement was that Sun's cash on hand exceeded their **short term** debt. When a company's revenue is falling and its credit rating comes into question, the difference becomes significant. When you have a part that is both financially and technically unsustainable, it's a safe bet that the part is doomed. The only question is when. Jonathan Shapiro Department of Computer Science Johns Hopkins University ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | CNET News.com David Farber (Jun 05)
- more on Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | CNET News.com David Farber (Jun 05)