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To: Dan3 who wrote (140887)	8/5/2001 6:12:59 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Dan, <It is interesting that a query on "Athlon MP" results in 99 hits while a query on Itanium results in 1 hit.> And that's a good thing? LOL!!! Tenchusatsu

To: Dan3 who wrote (140887)	8/5/2001 6:41:13 PM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 186894

Monday July 16, 5:35 pm Eastern Time TheStandard.com Compaq to Start Selling Its 1st Itanium Server By IDG Compaq Computer took the first step Monday toward revamping its high-end server line, releasing a 64-bit system based on Intel's Itanium processor. Compaq will begin shipping the ProLiant DL590/64 this quarter with up to four 800MHz Itanium processors. The new server currently supports Microsoft's 64-bit Windows Advanced Server, Limited Edition, and flavors of Linux from Red Hat and SuSE Linux. A two-way, 1G-byte DL590/64 will start at $23,000 with worldwide availability, according to a Compaq representative. ADVERTISEMENT Houston, Texas-based Compaq agreed to sell intellectual property for its own 64-bit Alpha processors to Intel in June. Compaq plans to abandon its Alpha-based products by 2004, moving all of its servers onto the Itanium platform. Intel released the Itanium processor earlier this year, garnering industry-wide support for the 64-bit chip. Intel had previously focused primarily on the low-end server market, teaming extensively with Microsoft to offer low cost 32-bit technology. The two companies hope to extend their partnership and sell moderately priced 64-bit systems to companies running computing-intensive applications. While industry pundits expect it will take some time for Itanium-based servers to become widely adopted, the processor family should eventually battle primarily with 64-bit architectures designed by Sun Microsystems and IBM. Copyright 2001 IDG News Service, International Data Group Inc. All rights reserved. Earlier stories from TheStandard.com: Novell Bolsters Web Authentication, Access Software Microsoft Wins the Winter Games IBM, Compaq Introduce More Advanced Servers Exodus Continues 6-Session Plunge Amid Analyst Downgrades Weeding Out Server Farms Visit www.thestandard.com for The Industry Standard's full coverage, news, and analysis on the Internet Economy. Get free email newsletters at www.thestandard.com/newsletters. Email this story - Most-emaile

To: Dan3 who wrote (140887)	8/5/2001 6:43:46 PM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 186894

Blow Boy - re: "Now that the proven Sun SPARC platform offers 900MHZ 64-bit processors " Lying again? Sun has stated that a 900 MHz UltraSlow III won't be shipping for at least 90 days - THREE FULL YEARS behind their original launch date. sumnet.com From Page One of Electronic News: June 22, 1998 Issue Sun Delays UltraSparc III Like Intel, firm says it has to do some fine-tuning of its chip By Jim DeTar Palo Alto, Calif.--Sun Microsystems has delayed the introduction of its next-generation 64-bit UltraSparc III architecture by at least two to three months, Electronic News has learned. The delay follows on the heels of a similar announcement by Intel, which recently said it will not ship the planned 64-bit Merced microprocessor in volume until the year 2000, a delay of six to nine months from the previous Intel schedule for Merced (EN, June 1). In a joint interview with EN at Sun headquarters here at the recent third annual Inside Sun Software day, Anant Agrawal, Sun Microelectronics VP of engineering; and Jeff O'Neal, Sun Microelectronics Sparc group marketing manager, outlined Sun's plans to stave off the Intel challenge in the workstation market. During the interview, Mr. Agrawal revealed that Sun will delay introduction of the UltraSparc III by several months. Although he attributed the delay to routine shakeouts associated with a new architecture, it raises questions as to whether there might be some difficulty getting the new architecture up on the EPIC-5 manufacturing process used by Sun's partner, Texas Instruments. TI will manufacture the first UltraSparc IIIs at the 0.25-micron geometry level. Sun's Opportunity -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Intel has said it will initially target the workstation/server segments with Merced, and later migrate the chip downward into the desktop PC market at the end of life of Pentium. According to Mr. Agrawal, despite the delay in the introduction of UltraSparc III, Intel's longer delay provides an opportunity for Sun to fine tune the architecture of the next-generation UltraSparc III. "The UltraSparc II is currently at 360MHz and the UltraSparc III's new architecture, which was introduced at last fall's Microprocessor Forum, will initially be offered at 600MHz at the end of this year. We have moved our introduction date for the UltraSparc III out by two to three months." At last year's Microprocessor Forum, Sun said it would sample the UltraSparc III by mid-summer '98. Now the company is saying it will have silicon by the end of this year. The delay may disappoint some workstation customers who have been waiting for UltraSparc III, which is expected at introduction to provide a 2- to 3x performance increase in terms of both integer and floating point performance over UltraSparc II due to its wide memory bandwidth of 2.4 gigabytes/sec. When asked why Sun had pushed out the introduction date for UltraSparc III, Mr. Agrawal responded, "We wanted to strengthen our design methodology." He said the company has not run into any unusual challenges but rather wanted to fine tune the architecture before release. "We are still planning on getting the design to silicon before the end of the year," he added. Mr. O'Neal said that Sun will continue to migrate the performance of UltraSparc II upward as it ramps UltraSparc III. "UltraSparc II will continue to push the microprocessor performance limits and we will go upwards of 500MHz with it. UltraSparc III will initially come out on 0.25-micron manufacturing process and the UltraSparc IV will come out on 0.18-micron." Sun provided a first look at the UltraSparc III architecture last fall at the 10th annual Microprocessor Forum in San Jose (EN, Oct. 13, 1997). Among the goals for the forthcoming architecture: scalability to 1,000-plus processor systems. Specifications for the soon to be released device include a six-layer metal, 0.25-micron design process, die size of 330 millimeters-squared, power draw of 70 watts at 1.8 volts, transistor count of 16 million consisting of 12 million transistors of RAM memory and 4 million logic transistors, in a 1,200-pin LGA package. Goals Expected -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This architecture is expected to enable UltraSparc III to reach an estimated SPECint95 integer rating of 35 and to push the SPECfp floating point performance rating to 60. The strong floating point measure for the chip will make it suitable for large data-set computing, such as computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM), electronic design automation (EDA) and scientific modeling applications. Mr. Agrawal said he thinks the upcoming transition to the combined x86/PA-RISC architecture will pose a difficult challenge for Intel in terms of software. "The 860 was the last software transition for Intel. With the combination of PA-RISC and IA-32 with new (64-bit) instructions, they have a hard problem in terms of verification. There is no legacy software. "We are simply adding to our verification suite with the UltraSparc III, building on 14 years of experience. UltraSparc III will be our third generation of the Sparc architecture. We are continually doing verification, we have a building here where there are 1,500 to 2,000 machines constantly doing functional verification." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other Top Stories -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- List of Issues -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Electronic News Home