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To: Dan3 who wrote (134516)	5/9/2001 2:52:25 PM
From: Saturn V	Respond to of 186894

Ref < Reliability of Sun vs X86> Sun has done an outstanding job of marketing its products. It gained market share in the Server Space at the expense of HP and IBM, by cleverly leveraging the hype surrounding JAVA. They have projected X86 as a toy by associating X86 with a cheap kludgy DOS based x86 machine with no ECC. However reality is that today the reliability of the hardware of x86 servers is probably better than that of SUN hardware( see Rudedog's comments). Now you understand why SUN FORCED its customers to sign NDA's regarding soft error susceptibility. The reliability of Windows NT is a major handicap for X86. However LINUX based servers are extremely reliable. XEON based servers are already taking major chunks of server market share. Win 2000 is reputed to be a lot more stable than Windows NT. The word of the reliability problems of some SUN servers, and the excellent reliability of LINUX, is spreading. Thus the loss of Server Market Share for SUN is inevitable. SUN is finally buying an insurance policy by providing low end X86 servers. Sun's strongest suit is the still the old image, the cost of migrating to a new platform, and the fact that it provides the customer with a complete Enterprise Computing Solution. So some customers will continue to pay Sun's exorbitant prices for the comfort of hand holding by SUN. It smacks of IBM mainframe days.

To: Dan3 who wrote (134516)	5/9/2001 2:52:27 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

AMD - Copy (Intel) Exactly !!! Four play: AMD chip name to echo Pentium By Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com May 9, 2001, 11:25 a.m. PT news.cnet.com Forget the Athlon 2 or 3. Advanced Micro Devices is going to call its next chip the Athlon 4. As part of its ongoing rivalry with Intel, AMD will call its new chip, coming out next week, the Athlon 4, according to sources. Presumably, the name change comes as a way to better market the chip against Intel's Pentium 4. There is no Athlon 2 or 3. Since 1999, all of the chips in the family have been called Athlon. The naming scheme will also let AMD claim a partial marketing victory in that its No. 4 chip will appear in notebooks in May. Intel won't squeeze a Pentium 4 into notebooks until the first half of 2002. The branding shenanigans were first reported on tech site Ace's Hardware. Code-named Palomino, the Athlon 4 will contain a number of improvements. Most importantly, the chip will consume far less power than current Athlon chips, according to AMD. Athlon chips right now consume about 60 watts of power, more than the Pentium III or 4. By ratcheting down the power consumption, AMD will be able to slip the chip into notebooks. The chip will appear in notebooks first, then servers and desktops. Processor brand names are a slippery science. Although in the past, Intel and AMD changed brand names when they changed microarchitectures, both companies began to more rapidly change brand names to fit different market segments in the late 1990s. The same basic microarchitecture, for instance, was used in the Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Celeron and Xeon. The chips differ in terms of packaging, speed, cache size, bus speed and other features, but share a common computing unit. Similarly, the K6-2 and K6-III from AMD shared the same core. More often than not, AMD has followed Intel's branding campaigns. AMD, for example, followed Intel in coming out with a budget brand. AMD's Duron chip is a lower cost Athlon and serves a similar purpose as Intel's Celeron. The Greco-Romanesque Athlon name also echoed the gladiatorial splendor of Celeron and Xeon. Until the name appeared, many expected the chip to be called the K-7. An AMD representative declined to comment.

To: Dan3 who wrote (134516)	5/9/2001 4:33:01 PM
From: Noel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Dan, Which computer companies are addressing the reliability aspects of X86-based servers? I see X86-based servers catching up with Sun's only if these companies have a compelling business reason to address the reliability issue. A lot of companies have been selling cheap X86 server solutions and I am sure that Sun has nothing much to worry about from these companies regardless of their profitability in this space. --noel

To: Dan3 who wrote (134516)	5/9/2001 5:44:17 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Respond to of 186894

Dan, <<<The reliability of the best X86 servers are as good as the SUNs, but the average X86 installed server is not.>>> I generally agree with your assessment that SUNs major problem is not in reliability but with price performance and compaitibility with off the shelf software. Also however, the average X86 installed server does not have the support expertise and resources that SUN installed servers have. This may account (in some measure) for more of the perceived differences between the robustness of the two. Mary