First PPC, now bye bye sparc

[genesus]

First, my plans for a ppc, and now for a sparc go up in flames.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/01/22/intel_sun_agreement/

Will this eventually mark a complete move from sparc to intel?

[techieMoe]

I don't know. Is Sun capable of surviving as a strictly software/support company? Last I checked they still make a lot of money selling their specific hardware with Solaris. I suppose it's possible (who would have expected Sega to get out of hardware and do well?) but I think Sparc probably has at least a few more years left in it.

[benjamin20]

i would imagine that its way easier to be just software rather than hardware. think about it. you make a piece of software. it sells, after you make back what you lost to make the software, its virtualy all profit.

the function

(profit) = (number sold)((sell price) - (manufacture cost)) - (initial design cost)

sows us the money made. but with hardware, manufacture cost is like .75 the sell cost. software, the manufacture cost is so small, its almost ignorable. so software looks more like.

(profit) = (number sold)(sell price) - (initial design cost)

also for faulty software the company gives back the buyers money. its almost like the transaction never happened. for hardware the money is given back, but the company sufferes the loss of a manufacture cost.

software only has to wory about selling enought products to cover initial design cost. hardware has same problem, but has to sell at a high enough price to also pay manufacture cost.

[likwid]

They are not discontinuing sparcs, and they've been marketing x86 servers for a while now, just not intel. Their hardware is pretty powerful, they have been doing 64 bit for a long time now and the new features in solaris seem pretty insane, I don't think Sun is going anywhere. IDK but I won a killer blade 2000 with awesome specs for a killer price on ebay... it shipped today.

[Vergil83]

It is odd, since I recalling seeing somewhere that the newer sparcs are great for low energy usage and heat production, so you can really pile racks of them together with no worry

[likwid]

I think a lot of things steer people away from sun- proprietary high-end hardware costs a lot to purchase and a lot to maintain. Not everybody thinks that the performance increase is worth it. Their OS requires admins with specific solaris skills, and MS as we know controls most of the world.

I love sun boxes, have since I first got my ultra 5 clone when I was still working at dunkin donuts around 16. I like the idea of this system with a command line interface even at the lowest level.

[bidi]

I doubt they will stop producing the current Sparcs! For one thing, Intel Xeon processors still have broken the 4 cores per processor barrier, and the latest time I check the OpenSparc architecture was doing really well with it's 8 cores. I can see how it would be in Sun's interest to sell lower end hardware, as the latest Sparc processor isn't exactly entry-level, or mid-level for that matter. I seriously can't imagine Sun becoming a software only company, it's just wouldn't be the same!

[Vergil83]

I doubt they will stop producing the current Sparcs! For one thing, Intel Xeon processors still have broken the 4 cores per processor barrier, and the latest time I check the OpenSparc architecture was doing really well with it's 8 cores. I can see how it would be in Sun's interest to sell lower end hardware, as the latest Sparc processor isn't exactly entry-level, or mid-level for that matter. I seriously can't imagine Sun becoming a software only company, it's just wouldn't be the same!

True, they have always been a hardware company. Of course, if somone said 5 years ago that they would also be the biggest contribitors to FOSS software of any company, most would have laughed.

[bidi]

Of course, if somone said 5 years ago that they would also be the biggest contribitors to FOSS software of any company, most would have laughed.

Well, yes and no! McNealy said at one point in time that in the future software would be free, and that the money was in hardware, which is why they never concentrated only in software. Of course I'm sure he meant free as in no cost and not freedom. I remember that when Schwartz took his place, there was a lot of talk about how Schwartz was basing Sun's business strategy in what McNealy had said years earlier.