Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (37147)	10/29/2000 7:58:33 PM
From: THE WATSONYOUTH	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

I suggest all Sun longs read this entire article. Like I said previously...... truly a bunch of shoemakers. forbes.com Engineers have long known that memory chips can be disrupted by radiation and other environmental factors. That is why Hewlett-Packard and IBM use error-correcting code, or ECC, which detects cache errors and restores bits that were changed by mistake. Sun servers lack ECC protection. "Frankly, we just missed it. It's something we regret at this point," Shoemaker says. Its next high-end servers, based on a new processor called the UltraSparc III, will have ECC protection; they are to debut in mid-2001. For now Sun is racing to deliver a new "mirrored" cache to replace defective modules in the field, although only where needed. The mirrored cache has two modules. If one fails, the other backs it up. The new modules begin shipping this month. Sun will install them, free, for customers whose machines have crashed. In the meantime some customers have fixed the problem by installing special software that can find and correct memory errors.At BellSouth Technology Service Sun has already replaced modules on servers that crashed, says Richard Liddell, a BellSouth vice president. But a dot-com in San Francisco has been waiting weeks for a repair. It bought a Sun 6500 server to run the database that is core to its business. The server crashed and rebooted four times over a few months."It's ridiculous. I've got a $300,000 server that doesn't work.The thing should be bulletproof," says the firm's president. A major telecommunications company endured repeated crashes on Sun servers. It recently committed to buy its next batch of Unix servers from HP. While no one has reported a consequential data loss from a crash, one Sun customer claims to have spent $3 million trying to diagnose and fix the problem, according to Gartner