Sun & Fujitsu Team On SPARC Chips & System

An anonymous reader writes "Sun and Fujitsu just announced a 20-year partnership to jointly develop SPARC based technology and systems. It looks like the long-predicted partnership that was hinted at earlier has finally come to pass in a much more comprehensive manner than I've heard anyone predict, i.e. not just chips, but a unified range of systems. My guess: Sun drops Ultrasparc III to provide the Throughput computing chips for the low end / web / network stuff, and takes up the Fujitsu provided SPARC64 chips for the high end and workstation market. Will this spark a new RISC renaissance for Sun and Fujitsu? Or is it a last gasp before Opteron / PowerPC / Itanium crush them? I for one will be interested to see what systems and processors come out of this. This could really revitalize the SPARC system market, especially if Sun's work on Throughput computing proves out."

20 years?

[Motherfucking Shit]

Sun and Fujitsu just announced a 20-year partnership..

I'm sorry, but a 20-year partnership is not only aggressively optimistic, it's just downright insane. Look at what's changed in the computing world over the past 20 years. Microsoft appeared, Apple came and went and came again, Linux emerged and gained ground. Things change fast in the world of Moore's law.

Will Sun be here 20 years from now? Will Fujitsu? If I were a betting man, I'd gamble on the latter more than the former.

This is an interesting deal, and stands to bring much progress in the short term, assuming both parties stick to their commitments. 20 years is a long time, though.

Re:What's actually going on here...

[jschottm]

> as Apple have shown its the system that matters, not the processor.

Yes, but remember, Apple was hurting for quite some time after Motorola stopped working on high end PPC chips. The stagnant G4 hurt Apple - I use encoding software that had started out on Macs but moved the focus of its development to Windows after the the G4 lost steam. The apple version still exists and is supported, but lacks some of the features of the Windows version. And while I've not had a chance to run it on a G5, a dual Athlon MP utterly spanks a dual G4.

The G5 certainly helps, but it still leaves Apple at the mercy of an outside supplier.

Confusing and mixed messages

[Anonymous Coward]

So yesterday there was the post about hardware being free and today there's news about Sun partnership for UltraSparc. Make up your freaking mind SUN. I still like SUN hardware for dense deployments where you got tons of racks, since Intel and AMD both run considerably hotter than UltraSparc. Sun needs to make up its mind about whether they believe UltraSparc has a future and stick to it. PC hardware is still isn't as reliable as high end Unix, so it's stupid to drop their R&D for high end systems. Some things simply scale better vertically than horizontally.

In two years SPARC won't exist

[Anonymous Coward]

With the Millenium project dead and buried Sun is relying on Ultra SPARC III to carry the comapny until "Mid 2006" when Fujitsu's and Sun's products will be shared between them. The current Niagra design (from Afara) is so low end that Sun will be luck to sell a few hundred systems based on it. If they didn't need a throughput computing product on the market RIGHT NOW they would have killed Niagra already.

When the inevitable schedule slips on Niagra II and Rock come to light (the original Niagra from Afara was "almost done" when Sun bought them two years ago, it's only just taped out) Sun will have no choice but to fall on it's sword and admit defeat. The company might survive if it can convince enough customers to recompile and move to Opteron based systems while sticking with Solaris, but that's going to be a hard sell when they can recompile for linux and not be locked into Sun's software/services stack.

Re:Cunning writers

[christophersaul]

They're not dropping an architecture - the architecture's still the same - Sparc.

UltraSparc has not been solidly beaten - UIV is out there now and doing well in the market. It's what follows it that will be jointly developed with Fujitsu, which will operate alongside the forthcoming Niagara and Rock multicore CPUs. Hardly a case of abandoing anything.

The fact that there's another company investing in and developing their own Sparc CPUs validates the whole architecture in the first place.

I agree with you that the strategy makes sense - low end with the 'i' range and Opteron Solaris/Solaris x86/Linux, with Solaris/Sparc for the mid to highend.

Itanium crushing something?

[invisik]

I don't think the Itanium is going to be crushing anything in it's short lifetime. However, the PowerPC/Opteron chips are putting the smack down quite nicely about now. We need them to bring back that Open spec for PPC hardware so we can get some serious speed and off of Intel..... !

-m

Worst intro paragraph ever!

[oldmanmtn]

Sun and Fujitsu just announced a 20-year partnership to jointly develop SPARC based technology and systems.

They have had a partnership for 20 years - they aren't announcing a new one.

My guess: Sun drops Ultrasparc III

Sun is already shipping the Ultrasparc IV. Nice guess!

to provide the Throughput computing chips for the low end / web / network stuff,

They have already announced that this is exactly what they are going to do. Again: nice guess!

and takes up the Fujitsu provided SPARC64 chips for the high end and workstation market.

Yesterday's announcement was all about using SPARC64 on the high end. Usually the trick is reading between the lines - not reading the lines themselves.

Sun also announced that they will be using Opterons in their new workstation line - not SPARC64.

Will this spark a new RISC renaissance for Sun and Fujitsu? Or is it a last gasp before Opteron / PowerPC / Itanium crush them?

Itanium has gone white dwarf. The only thing it will be crushing is itself.

Opteron is not going to crush Sun. They have announced that they are shipping multiple Opteron boxes (1-8 way servers and 1-2 way workstations).

This could really revitalize the SPARC system market, especially if Sun's work on Throughput computing proves out.

This doesn't even make sense. The Fujitsu/Sun machines are not the Throughput Computing systems that Sun has been talking about for months. Throughput compututing is Niagara/Rock - the Sun-only CPUs.