Alexander Pyhalov wrote:
john g4lt wrote:
So show me win 2003/2008 for sparc...
So show me SPARC :) It's another difficult question - the price and
popularity (i.e. its absence) of this hardware, which caused Sun fault.
IBM (or even Sun) x64 blade costs about 3.000$. And Sun SPARC blade
costs 10.000$. They are comparable (and Intel/AMD blade nowadays may
be faster). So how should I explain our manager, that SPARC hardware
is so good? Is it really 3 times better?
Not to be a pain, but nowdays, AMD/Intel x64 processors and SPARC
hardware have different targets, and thus, different featuresets, and
aren't really apples-to-apples comparisons. The various Niagara (and
followon) processors kick the living crap out of even super-new
Westmere/Nehalem or Istanbul CPUs in certain areas (compute/W,
simultaneous threads, etc.), while not even the high-end Fijitsu SPARC64
chips can compete against AMD/Intel on limited-thread (e.g. single or
dual-thread) apps. Overall system design is also critically important
when determining performance for various workloads.
As usual, the answer is more complex. To reply to your question: YES,
in some cases, paying 3x for a SPARC is more than worth it. In other
cases, you'd be an idiot to pay even equal amounts for a SPARC vs. x64.
Take a look at AMD's new offerings coming this year - they're looking at
splitting their targets up, going with higher thread count/lower
frequency for some areas (Magny Cours) and low thread count/high
frequency (Sao Paulo). It's all about market segmentation.
--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop: usca22-123
Phone: x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)
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