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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems

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To: Robert who wrote (44491)	8/17/2001 9:11:31 PM
From: E_K_S	Read Replies (3) of 64865

Hi Robert: Is "EPIC code" the same as compiled 64 bit code? What OS's process EPIC code (any Windows based OS's like Windows 2000)? Do you know if SUNW ever did a port of their Solaris OS (for the Itanium processor), can Sunw's OS (through software control) bypass the hardwired x86 translator built into the Itanium. Sunw mentioned they were working on Ultra Sparc 5. The UltraSparc V will be able to switch between two different modes depending on the type of work the computer is doing. One mode will be good for heavy-duty calculations, the other for business transactions such as recording or retrieving information in a database. I guess the heavy-duty calculation mode will utilize a very efficient floating point processor and not a software translator found in Intels's current approach. ======================================================== This is from an earlier article I posted August 6 titled: Sun's UltraSparc V chip has a split-personality (http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2801816,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1tp02) From the article: "...Adding instruction-level parallelism to a chip improves its performance without requiring software companies to rewrite their programs, there is a hitch, Brookwood said. The problem relates to compiler software--which translates programs humans have written into instructions a chip can understand. Compilers are key to making sure the instructions fed to a processor are optimized to take advantage of the chip's features. "Instruction-level parallelism is very compiler-sensitive," Brookwood said. It's a lesson Intel is learning with the Itanium...." --------------------------------------------------------- From the stated performance times for the x86 translator, I guess we can conclude that a 1.5 GHZ Itanium processor running an x86 Windows database application is equivalent to a 250 MHZ Ultra Sparc machine running the same application with Solaris 6? EKS

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