On Thursday 30 June 2005 19:55, Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Peter Arremann <loony@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> > Sun will very willingly support all certified solutions (including EMC,
> > netApp or Hitachi for storage) as well as provide some support with
> > uncertified hardware for us... no issues...
>
> You work in a Fortune 5, they will do anything you tell them.
> I've been there before, and that is a very nice position to hold.
>
> But not when you work for a 50 engineer semiconductor startup.
> Sun really pissed us off regularly, so we stuck with Fujistu.
Actually that's before I started working there... Support is the one thing sun
is good at... Honestly, they hardware is pretty bad quality wise - especially
their volume server line... Fujitsu surely has much better control over their
QA process...
> > Yep - but how is that a benefit if your stuff works? NVidia is fabless
> > i.e. and you surely don't want to tell me they aren't good at what they
> > do... Having your own fab or not has very little influence...
>
> I was just saying that anyone who only wants to go to Sun because they
> are behind SPARC might consider Fujitsu, who actually fabs the chips.
> I've walked into many shops who have had issues with Sun's support and
> they never knew about Fujitsu as an option. That's all.
Yep - I agree - HAL made a great chip ... out of order execution on a
architecture that has register windows is impressive engineering...
> > Sbus ???? Now you're talking US-I/II again - and that is absolutely
> > no match for an opteron box...
>
> Sorry, I meant NUMA/UPA -- my bad.
>
> > Based on what? The Implementation of Solaris for AMD dates back to SE b68
> > or 69... that's mid 2004... Compare that to an OS that already ran on the
> > software emulator before silicon was even out there...
>
> Solaris was _also_ running on the x86-64 emulator too. ;->
Yep - but only in 32bit mode...
> AMD and Sun were in negotiations before the first Opteron came out.
Really? didn't know that... Thought it wasn't until much later... 2003 or
so...
> > Solaris 10 on AMD64 is definitely less stable that Centos 4 on the same
> > v40z... Running the same apps we had 0 crashes with Linux vs. 2 explained
> > and patched, 1 explained still unpatched and 1 unexplained crash on
> > Solaris10...
>
> I meant the design:
> "given its experience on partial mesh interconnected systems"
>
> I thought by putting that in the _same_statement_ you'd see what I meant by
> "mature." Sorry, I assumed wrong. ;->
> > Why would you need to run on sparc to produce a stable OS for an opteron
> > box?
>
> Re-read my full statement ...
Fair enough - still not stable in my experience and the sun support guys I
talked to pretty much openly admitted that many others share the same
experience as us... The first update was a great improvement though...
Peter.
