Fun from the Inquirer.
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Cupertino Cathy spills Compaq's Sun dance secrets
Leakware: Message in a bottle
By Eva Glass, 09/01/2002 09:47:29 BST
CATHY CALLED ME on my cellphone tellphone yesterday.
She said: "Hey Eva, just skip the kidology - there's no such person as Houston Hannah, is there? She's a figment of your fervid imagination and her real name is Harriet, right?" I muttered something about protecting my sources.
Cathy said: "Didja see that competitive document DH Brown prepared for Compaq last month? Like the pharmacist says, it's for internal use only - if you apply it on the outside you're in a heap of trouble."
"Negative," I said. "As Olivia Newton-John sung, 'Tell me more'."
Cathy said: "Well, I can't let you put it on Magee's Web site, because DH Brown has hedged it about with copyright embargoes that would get him in big trouble with the Big Q in Blighty, but it compares Sun Fire servers with the AlphaServer GS series, a bit unfavourably you won't be surprised to hear."
Her voice took on that throaty tone that's sent cigarette-addicted marketing executives rushing for nicotine substitutes in case their voice ends up like hers.
The biggest and greatest Sun Fire model is the 15K, which supports 106 processors using 900MHz UltraSparc IIIs, but Compaq's consultant reckons that 72 processors is really the max unless you use special Sun gizmos called MaxCPUs, said Cathy.
But Sun Fire has some pluses over the Compaq GS series, such as dynamic system domains which lets up to 18 domains be configured using high speed interconnect.
The Dynamic Reconfiguration feature is also pretty useful, Compaq reckons, with PCI and system controllers coming under the thrall of that feature now, and memory boards and CPUs scheduled to arrive this quarter. As well as that, Sun Fires support up to 576GB in the 15K version. Hey - they'd better buy Kingston memory, I thought - that will cost a fortune if big businesses take the Sun route.
Another advantage is that Sun Fires support a single operating system, and Compaq realises that this "concentrates resources and focuses the marketing". Mind you, you can't have those excellent Q operating systems like OVMS, K2 and Tru64, though but. (Did I tell you Cathy was born in Bishop Auckland, Co. Durham?).
Sun Fires have good RAS features too, better than the GS series.
But there's a downside - and Mr Anonymous Brown says that the 1001MHz Alpha outperforms the UltraSparc III by giving around 60 per cent more performance.
Plus the GS machines support a lot more PCI IP ports than Sun Fires, and the GS backlane is a btter deal too.
Thanks to good old Digital, Compaq now understands enterprises better than Sun - specially in the area of high performance technical computing and -biz.
Compaq's clustering is far better too with good interconnects on 100Mbps Ethernet of up to 11Mbs and latency greater than 100 microseconds. Tru64 helps scaleability, and Trucluster file systems are far better, Cathy said.
I butted in. "But will Compaq carry on with the Tru64 technology," I asked.
"Kent said so," she added mysteriously. "Who?". "Aw some Unix evangeliser," she said.
In fact, Tru64 seems to be the real bees bollocks, according to Cathy, with good Oracle, BEA and other abilities. It beats Sun hands down.
She said: "Now listen to this Eva. Sun marketing is trying to twist the Alpha Itanic migration and the HP announcements to make it look as though Alpha Servers are dead ends. Sun claims that Solaris is the most popular Unix in the Universe."
"That's BS," she snapped. "Sun is making ominous noises to give corporate customers corporate angst about buying kit now." She said that Q staff when asked this sort of question by customers have to say - well the deal isn't done yet, and they should position Q products separately from HP products. Surprise.
And if the merger goes through, both Q and HP will make a Unix hybrid that's got HP/UX and Tru64 features - although that's going to happen a lot later than the move from Alpha to the Itanium. Obviously.
"Alpha is not dead!" she snapped. "GS users won't face a major and catastrophic conversion to Intel."
"Hey Cathy," I said. "Steady on - has Compaq inserted a Tualatin blade chip into your brain or something - you don't normally get that defensive about the Big Q."
"Sorry," she said. "It's just that the Thought Police are everywhere these days and anyway Alpha is very much alive with support guaranteed for the next ten years.
"That's a lifetime in the fast moving IT world," she said. Speaking in cliches means she's still reading from the script a'course.
She reckoned Compaq suits think Solaris is oblivious to Numa and its shared memory system isn't really Uniform Memory Access at all. Just because Sun claims it can support 106 CPUs doens't mean it's really scaleable.
Even though DH Brown rated Solaris 8 as the number one Unix, that doesn't mean that Tru64 is crap - hey, the total scores of Solaris and Tru64 are almost the same, she said.
And as for Solaris hot parching chip kernels - well, that's a futurological version of kidology. It could take five years to implement that.
I said: 'Hey Cathy - I gotta go and watch that gorgeous Apple "Seal" video again. Anything else for me?"
"Yeah," she said. "Carly Fiorina started singing after her keynote at CES yesterday." µ |
