Sun VP Responds to IBM, Linux Claims

This man really seems to have a mastery of the issue. Sun has through their own long list of open source offerings and contributions (vs the monopolistic history of IBM) the unquestioned credibility to speak to this issue in any way they so wish, and they are correctly distingushing the difference between the illegal theft of intellectual property and the sometimes worthwhile contribution to society.

He goes on to speak about how the black-hatters are now leading us to the inevitable increase of required home-user authentication, simply due to the amount of extreme piracy/fraud that is currently taking place on the internet.

Will this make things better in the long run? Yes, in my opinion, just like how at some point in history we started requiring drivers licenses on the open roads. Internet outlaws may fancy yourselves as modern day versions of Butch Cassidy, but the Wyatt Earps are going to get them in the end.

As for respectful open source programmers, who certainly exist and can dialouge in a dignified manner, I look forward to discussing this with you. But No flame wars, please.

Looking at the first view that says Intel is the future, how many operating systems run on Intel? There are only three. There's the one that Microsoft delivers. There's the one that Red Hat delivers -- because Linux right now is Red Hat. Red Hat has way more control than Linus [Torvalds, the creator of Linux] does.

There's actually a forth, *BSD (Free and Open and Net).

The good news is there are now 150 million Java-enabled phones in the world we'll be at 300 million by the end of the world.

Damn. It doesn't sound like there's gonna be time to even finish this thread.

As for respectful open source programmers, who certainly exist and can dialouge in a dignified manner, I look forward to discussing this with you. But No flame wars, please.

If you're still interested in discussing technology transfers to the Communist Chinese government, here is a thread for you -

Microsoft gives 12 governments a peek [Windows source code given to China, Russia, etc.]

Yes, I am extremely disapointed in that. Apparently though it is one of the unfortunate side effects to the widespread propogation of Linux, and it's acceptance by our potential advesaries. Worst, Sun, Apple, even IBM may be forced at some point to make similiar submissions themselves. However, 'peeks' at M$ or other US proprietary code in no way compares to Linux being the official operating system of the Chineese government:

Raise The Red Flag Linux

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5116

There's actually a forth, *BSD (Free and Open and Net).

You are correct, and I can only guess as to why he would not mention that. Probably A) he considers their market share and likelihood to increase to be very small, no matter how correct that may or may not be or B) he only listed operating systems that were available on the retail market.

My guess would continue that it is probably B, and as *BSD is without a significant x-tier support structure from anywhere (unless you or someone knows of one) he doesn't actually consider them much of a competitor to the high end business or government customers that Sun currently supports.

And also, a possible C) since remember Sun is trying to walk a fine line of being pro-"open source" as well as offer proprietary solutions, so they probably are purposefully avoiding criticisms of all things open source. Interested in your perspective, if you have time.

Damn. It doesn't sound like there's gonna be time to even finish this thread.

Likely a typo. Have any comments as to the more pertinent issues, or are you already knocking on every door down the street letting them know?

I think the BSDs have zero or very limited multiprocessor support, and that has limited their adoption beyond web servers and firewalls. It is too bad, because BSD is absolutely superior for network intensive operations. Its IP stack is like a Ferrari.

As for Linux, with the upcoming 2.6 kernel it is clearly being architected for the mid-tier. It has a much improved threading model, which is perfect for J2EE appservers.

The thing that will hinder Linux on the database tier are its lack of strong fault logging compared to Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX, and Linux's "grab bag" of disk volume managers and filesystems. Until their is a shakeout of disk volume managers and filesystems, none will get the programming attention needed to make them as mature as Veritas or IBM's AIX products. I know IBM has provided an open source version of JFS to Linux, but it is not that strongly adopted. There are just too many different ones for Linux right now: IBM JFS, SGI XFS, EFS, Reiser, etc.

The "proprietary" implementations of UNIX (Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX) are continually being improved in the areas of availability technologies and resource management. As such, they are becoming the new MVSs of the datacenter. I do not see how an open source model will ever catch up with them, however if "proprietary" UNIX becomes a niche player, "proprietary" UNIX may fade away.

Perhaps the answer is a "proprietary" UNIX that looks and feels like Linux, runs on the same hardware, and runs Linux binaries, but has all of the high-end features needed to run mission critical databases.

My guess is if IBM, HP, or Sun do not come out with such a software-only play, Microsoft will continue to add availability features to Windows Datacenter and eventually take this market.

I was disappointed that the guy either didn't finish his thought concerning possible Intel domination of the server market, or the article got chopped up in such a way that it was lost.

He tells us that, "On the server side, there are two schools of thought. One says Intel is going to be the future as far as we can see (a few years down the road). And then there are others like me that say Intel right now, on the low end, has done a good job of characterizing workloads."

I for one do not accept the idea that Intel's success on the desktop is necessarily transferable into equal success in the data center. Intel might well succeed anyway; they certainly have fine engineers and a track record of being able to manufacture their designs. But I don't believe the volumes they achieve at the low end are going to be all that big an advantage in the 'big box' world. They didn't seem to think so either, and so went ahead with a software-incompatible Itanium. In a vacuum that might have worked, but AMD has thrown them a curve ball in the form of a 64-bit processor that will natively execute the huge base of 32-bit code. AMD's design could even be somewhat inferior come the actual future, but it is much better at solving the real-world problem of how we get there from here. IT managers don't get to leap into the future in one hop; they're going to be stuck with some chunks of 32-bit code they have to support during the transition. AMD just plain has a better story than Intel on how to do that.

In addition, because of the Itanium's slow sales, Intel has nothing like the volume-driven manufacuturing cost advantage they have over everybody else in the "P4" space. Before too long, AMD's Opteron could be shipping in higher volumes than Itanium. IBM's Power series and SUN's SPARCs probably already are. So Intel is no slam dunk in the server market.

Our protagonist unfortunately does not go on to tell us what he thinks the 'other' alternative is. It could come from either direction, and blindside Intel badly. Whatever the hell those little chips are that are going into all those cell phones, they are going to get dirt-cheap in the volumes they are being made. In transaction-oriented environments like web services, a bizillion little chips is every bit as good as one Big Kahuna processor. So the Itaniums, the SPARCs, and the Power chips could all find themselves getting whacked by Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive CPUs... the RAID idea applied to server boxes, with cell phone chips used as the CPU's because they're so damned cheap.

There are still lots of jobs that nobody really knows how to break up all that easily, which is why IBM and Sun are still able to make money peddling "big iron." In those boxes, the CPU chips per se are not the determinant of performance that they are in simpler boxes, so even low-volume proprietary chips like SPARCs can find a home if the rest if the box design is appropriate.

For these reasons, I don't see how Intel has any particular advantage at the high end, and at the transaction level where today they are moving lots of cheap server boxes for Dell, HP, IBM, etc., they might get surprised by something out of left field... like the Second Coming of Motorola, or one of the other cell phone guys.

Sun would be a good candidate to come up with a "One thousand cell phone chips in a box" product, because that kind of architecture is right up their alley. IBM probably has one in the back room, too. It's an obvious idea. It's basically the same idea Sequent had, back when putting 64 Pentiums in a box was a big challenge.

Very interesting post, thanks for sharing.

The "proprietary" implementations of UNIX (Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX) are continually being improved in the areas of availability technologies and resource management. As such, they are becoming the new MVSs of the datacenter. I do not see how an open source model will ever catch up with them, however if "proprietary" UNIX becomes a niche player, "proprietary" UNIX may fade away.

Agreed, surely you've seen the recent rocking board claims of IBM and HP over who has the fastest TPC systems. Question is, will Linux eat their lower end and leave them with that 'niche'.

Perhaps the answer is a "proprietary" UNIX that looks and feels like Linux, runs on the same hardware, and runs Linux binaries, but has all of the high-end features needed to run mission critical databases.

Again very likely, and this could be where Sun seems headed with their x86 product. On their website they claim "Linux applications run unmodified on Solaris OS x86" (http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/x86/index.html), plus with Sun you could be 'insured' from any possible SCO liability.

For these reasons, I don't see how Intel has any particular advantage at the high end, and at the transaction level where today they are moving lots of cheap server boxes for Dell, HP, IBM, etc., they might get surprised by something out of left field...

Pretty good analysis Danger, except that new microprocessor designs probably aren't going to fare any better than Transmeta has. And although your point is well taken about how Intel is in no way guaranteed a long life in big iron, it really is more at shot at HP who will soon be locked into Intel, not Sun, who has no intention of scraping Sparc.

new microprocessor designs probably aren't going to fare any better than Transmeta has

I don't really know how Transmeta is doing. The ARM design (an embedded 32-bit RISC mfg'd under license by many) is in some huge percentage of phones, PDA's, etc. Unit shipment of ARM chips were 400 million in 2000; it's around 700 million per year now. Anything that gets made in quantity 700 million gets very, very, cheap.

Good analysis, Nick. Read an article in a trade journal once, that said that if you want to look at a marriage made in heaven, look at AMD and Sun. I was convinced then and am now. The x86 architecture is a winner. The Solaris OS may or may not be a winner in the marketplace, but it is the very best thing that Sun makes. Nobody (that I know of) buys Sun because they love the Sparc chip. People buy Sun (IMHO) because they want Solaris. If you take the very best of the Unix OS's and you marry it up to what well may be the best migration path to 64 bits for the x86 you have, it seems to the article and to me, a surefire winner. I would think Sun could do a lot better by jettisoning the Sparc architecture since competing against the giants in the chip space is difficult at best and nigh unto impossible at worst. If you could buy a cheap, high performance server with the Opteron 64 bit chip and the latest version of Solaris with full support, I would think that would be a compelling buy. And it would be the best hope for both Sun and AMD to fight the Wintel juggernaut. Will we see it, I dunno. Would be interested in your thoughts.

Also I think the comment that was made about Java on phones is right on target (and I guess is another shot in the arm for Sun). It looks to me like Java on phones is going to be as popular as popcorn at movie theatres. Probably not as profitable (think of the markup on popcorn plus you get to sell all those overpriced drinks to boot) but certainly as prevalent.

Your thoughts?

if you want to look at a marriage made in heaven, look at AMD and Sun.

I thought the obvious marriage was Sun and Apple; that would have produced a single company with a product line that went from desktop to big iron. IBM and HP already have that; Sun was the one guy who didn't, unless you count those "pizza box" things that Sun tried to peddle. That deal would have been a lot easier to put together before Jobs came back to Apple. I think McNealy missed his chance.

I don't think CPU chip prices are that big a deal, as an element of cost, once you get above a certain-sized box. Sun doesn't have to get SPARC down to the manufacturing cost of an AMD chip; they only have to equal AMD's price to them, which on Opteron (or Itanium) they can probably do already, even with their modest volumes. IBM is in the same position with the Power chips. The market for 64-bit chips is so rarified that nobody is going to see Pentium-4 class volumes any time soon. By the time that happens, IBM and Sun will have 128-bit implementations; that's how you play that game.

As for Java on phones, Sun is giving that away to the phone guys... they literally intend to sell the "blades" in the back room. They figure if Java is on the phones, they'll get their share of all the big boxes it will take to ride herd on all those millions of phones out there.

The mobile phone business is even more cutthroat than the desktop PC market. Margin-wise, these are consumer-volume hardware guys flying five feet over the trees. There is no room in the bill of materials for a Microsoft-priced operating system. A pure software company will have a hell of a time in that market, because guys like Sun have every incentive to give the razors away, just to get the blades on the back end.