http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentS...StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1085944447963
I think this has generally been predicted by many people, myself included. I
was saying in a previous thread that Sun is going to give up all of its
Sparc processors through the combination of AMD and Fujitsu.
Thread:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E23632678
The deals that Sun has been making in the past year were all leading to very
obvious conclusions. Besides a deal with AMD to use Opterons, Sun announced
a joint development deal with Fujitsu earlier in the year, and now it looks
like its legacy Sparc customers will now be served by a joint Sun/Fujitsu
conglomeration. Sun Fire and Fuji Primepower servers will disappear in a few
years time to be replaced by this new common Advanced Product Line (APL).
Sun will then focus its attention on selling Opterons to its new customers
and Sparcs for its old customers will be the responsibility of this Sun/Fuji
alliance.
For my next bold prediction, I think all future APL Sparcs will be
Opteron-compatible! No, not software-wise, but electrically, so that they
will be able to share motherboards and other hardware. This way a future
common workstation chassis could be fitted with either Opterons or Sparcs.
And then eventually, the Sparc architecture will fade away to the world of
embedded controllers.
It's not beyond imagination. All of these companies have some connection to
AMD, and sometimes many simultaneous connections. Fujitsu-Siemens is already
one of the pioneer Opteron workstation vendors. Fujitsu holds a stake in a
flash memory joint-venture with AMD, Spansion. And of course Sun is
codeveloping a chipset with Broadcom-Serverworks for Opteron.
Oh, BTW, in other news Sun plans to Open-Source Solaris in the future:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/gmsv/8819569.htm
Yousuf Khan
