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

To: still learning who wrote (53863)	4/21/2003 1:45:13 PM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

The Opteron gives x86 customers a lot of choices. If Sun pursues an x86 product line for the lower part of the range, which they at least seem to have already decided to do, the Opteron is a better offering for low and mid-range customers, both from the customer's POV and from Sun's. (Assuming AMD executes) Opteron will run current x86 software without penalty, thus it will allow customers to migrate applications to 64-bits at their own pace rather than requiring a sharp migration between incompatible architectures or running legacy x86 apps in a crippled emulation mode as on Itanic. Why should Sun support Intel/Itanic? They tried...they got kicked in the teeth for their efforts. Maybe they screwed it up, but for whatever reason Intel is no ally. If Sun stays with Sparc, they have to focus on souping it up on the high end, they can't compete in CPU development across the range; they're spread too thin as it is. If Sun doesn't stay with Sparc, it's not clear what business they're in. Backing the Opteron has many risks associated with it; it is far from a magic bullet. But Sun right now is in a high-risk position anyway. The Opteron seems to me a reasonably cost-effective gamble, with manageable risks--because Sun has plenty of history working with x86 machines and porting to new architectures--and potentially high rewards. Even if Opteron is tried and works, Sun still has to execute on many other aspects of its business to remain viable. As a great man once said, JMHO. --QS