I wonder if this guy will be able to sell himself to Sun a second time (hopefully without the ensuing multibillion $$$ writedown we saw with Cobalt).
--QS
Tech Firm Unveils Plan For Powerful Server, Chip
By DON CLARK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 24, 2004; Page B3
A secretive Silicon Valley start-up is finally sharing a plan to build not only a radical kind of computer but also a unique breed of microprocessors to power it.
Departing from an industry trend toward standard chips, Azul Systems Inc. says it has packed the equivalent of 24 microprocessors on a single piece of silicon. Many companies are offering or developing such "multicore" chips, including International Business Machines Corp. and Intel Corp., but started out by squeezing two to four processors on each chip.
Azul's chips are tailored for software programs that are written using a new generation of programming technologies, including Java from Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s .NET. Azul plans to offer special-purpose server systems -- in sizes ranging from 96 to 384 processors -- that it believes will be much more efficient and powerful than existing machines for running such software.
Azul's plans have been a hot topic of speculation, in part because of the track record of Stephen DeWitt, Azul's president and chief operating officer. The entrepreneur is best known in Silicon Valley as the former chief executive of Cobalt Networks Inc., a maker of low-cost servers that was purchased for $2 billion in 2000 by Sun, where Mr. DeWitt served as a vice president before starting Azul. That deal is credited with helping Sun enter the market for low-end servers that use the Linux operating system, but the company later wrote down the value of the acquisition, citing inflated stock-market values at the time of the purchase.
The target audience for Azul's new gear is corporate managers who are struggling to estimate how many servers to buy. Where each of those systems is typically assigned to run a single program or two, Azul's machines, by contrast, are designed to handle changing workloads from many programs.
"We wanted to fundamentally eliminate the issues of capacity planning around computing," Mr. DeWitt said.
Azul, a closely held company based in Mountain View, Calif., was largely inspired by the evolution of data-storage systems, Mr. DeWitt said. Where companies used to buy storage hardware from their computer vendor -- which was mainly designed to work with its products -- technology standards emerged in the 1990s that allowed storage systems to hold files of any type that come from nearly any kind of computer.
New programming technologies, such as Java and .NET, use a layer of translation software, called a virtual machine, that allows an application program to run on multiple kinds of computers and operating systems. Though programs based on such technologies are a fraction of the software companies use today, Mr. DeWitt cites estimates that 80% of new programs by 2008 will be based on virtual-machine approaches.
Azul isn't disclosing pricing for its computers yet, which are being tested this fall with selected customers and should go on sale in the first half of 2005, Mr. DeWitt said.
The idea of specialized chips to run Java programs isn't new. Nathan Brookwood, an industry analyst at Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif., notes that Sun built such a chip a couple of years ago that wasn't successful, in large part because certain pieces of underlying software weren't available in Java versions. He said he believes Azul may face the same problem as well as the preference of customers for established suppliers.
"How do they convince the kind of people who have workloads that would benefit from that kind of power that they should bet on an unknown?" Mr. Brookwood asked.
Azul hopes partners and investors will help. It plans to have its chips manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Financial backers include five venture-capital firms -- Accel Partners, Austin Ventures, ComVentures, Redpoint Ventures and Worldview Technology Partners.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com |
