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

To: E_K_S who wrote (48565)	4/25/2002 11:24:59 AM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Eric: What equivalent chip set(s) does AMD or Intel server designs use that incorporate those features now available in Sunw's V880 line? LSI is a low cost producer and has been working with Sunw for some time to optimize the I/O server performance in these products. That is a good question to which I don't have the answer. I could research it, but I think the real answer is: "doesn't matter". If all of a sudden a number of serious OEM box builders line up behind a 64-bit scalable stretched-x86 CPU design, which like SPARC can power anything from a little $2,000 desktop box to a 64-way SMC, but which has enormous volume potential because it will also transparently roll into the next generation of PC's without imposing conversion constraints or penalties on customers at any level, do you think the chipset issue will prove important? Is there really any doubt that chipset makers of every stripe, from AMD and Intel themselves to VIA/SiS/Acer and certainly LSI, will fall all over themselves to support it with Infiniband, memory controllers and whatever else is required? Not to mention the few diehard old-line box makers that will try to roll their own before they go broke, like Unisys. Have you by any chance noticed the speed with which new chipsets appear in the PC market, and how frequently they bring significant performance improvements? And how little they cost? All of those commodity chipset builders are members of the various consortia that will define the next-generation busses and I/O protocols that will support a stretched x86 CPU architecture at every implementation level from desktop to 4/8/16-way box. And again, these guys are used to spinning new chipsets out at almost ridiculous speed. They're not like Sun or Intel or even AMD: they don't miss schedules by 18 months. True, they throw desktop chipsets on the market without testing them and the OEM's will have to ride herd on that tendency. But somehow I don't think that will prove to be a limiting factor. The replacement of the doomed-from-day-one Itanic with the stretched x86 CPU in the Wintel space will present Sun with very serious challenges. If those CPU's really do ship in volume in 2003, Sun will be hurting very badly by 2005 unless something radical happens in the meantime. --QS