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

To: Robert who wrote (44559)	8/20/2001 7:48:49 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Re: Compatibility modes Compatibility modes exist because applications are not migrated en masse from one architecture to another. There will always be stragglers which is why all processor manufacturers accommodate staged migration plans. IBM's new 64-bit z/Architecture, for example, is trimodal for exactly this reason. I've no doubt SUNW took great pains to ensure that 32-bit SPARC applications ran unchanged when they introduced 64-bit support as well. It is well to poke fun at IA-64 in its initial (and late) implementation, but it is a relentless investment stream which will only continue to evolve and strengthen as the years pass. There may well be room for other architectures, but no business plan whose success depends on IA-64's failure is likely to survive for very long. SUNW's future, such as it may be, will therefore be lived alongside an IA-64 world. To believe otherwise seems unrealistic in the extreme.