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List:       opensolaris-discuss
Subject:    Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris cancelled,
From:       Matthias =?iso-8859-1?Q?Pf=FCtzner?= <Matthias () Pfuetzner ! DE>
Date:       2010-09-09 13:15:26
Message-ID: 20100909131526.GB22426 () Pfuetzner ! DE
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You (Erik Trimble) wrote:
> On 9/9/2010 4:38 AM, Karel Gardas wrote:
> > > And yes, POWER has a bleak future. It will die eventually.
> > I'm afraid POWER has more shining future than SPARC unfortunately. Have you heard \
> > anything about A2? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_A2 -- very good CPU on \
> > the paper with ability to kill Niagara (based on pricing of course).
> 
> Last I'd heard, these were going to be competitive (if slightly better in 
> both single-threaded performance and per-watt performance) of the Niagara 
> T2+ series chips (i.e. what's in the T5xxx series).
> 
> That of course is dependent on me actually seeing one of these in a system, 
> which I have not yet done so.  And, of course, their value is in how the T3 
> SPARC processor compares. Which I would expect to see in actual systems 
> about the same time, give or take.  Then again, I can't say I have any more 
> information about when either the T3 or the A2 will actually be available.
> 
> 
> The real question for the A2 is how it performs in each of the possible 
> categories:  IP/ethernet routing, crypto, general-use Integer, and 
> general-use FP, plus any special use (i.e. SSE-style) FP.   I have yet to 
> see any numbers on it.
> 
> -- 
> Erik Trimble
> Java System Support
> Mailstop:  usca22-123
> Phone:  x17195
> Santa Clara, CA
> Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)

And NEVER forget:

Will they be binary compatible with EXISTING AIX/Power apps (Yes, IBM claims
that, but it's not written on that wikipedia page...)? Or will they require a
new AIX Version (for sure, but that's also no surprise, same with Solaris, if
there's a new CPU, it needs an update), and, like IBM did so often, also
require newly certified and newly compiled and provided apps for that new
version of AIX?  And also remember: The current version of AIX does not yet
support the multi-CPU behemoth 795, it requires that big iron to be
hardware-partitioned into multiple parts, so that the non-scaling AIX is
capable of "filling" or "using" all the HW, although not yet in a single SMP
system... (you have to run multiple instances of AIX in that big box, or wait
for AIX 7 to appear, which than is claimed to scale up to that size).

Remember: Even withe the old E10K, Solaris at GA date was capable to use all
that hardware from a single kernel... And that's more than 12 years
back... ;-) So, scaling on cores, CPUs and thread is what Solaris still does
better than any other big commercial OS on this planet...

Remember: Sparc is binary compatible, and Solaris does honour that, so there's
less hassle in moving to a new system... (although, I have to admit, that
most customers really don't take advantage of this...)

OK, enough to put that not-yet here piece into perspective... We'll all have
to wait and see...

     Matthias
-- 
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