| Author |
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Dan Koren
Guest
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 Posted:
Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:15 am Post subject:
Re: SGI finally on its last legs? |
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"Colonel Forbin" <forbin@dev.nul> wrote in message
news:GDCXe.14151$ib1.5709@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com...
| Quote: |
As Dan Koren is fond of pointing out, SGI has made
a number of strategic blunders over the years, not
the least of which was selling the CS6400 IP to Sun.
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a) I never made such a claim.
b) I was not on board with SGI when it acquired Cray,
and do not know the facts that led to the CS6400
design being handed over to Sun. Rumors I heard
suggested that may have been a result of clauses
burried (deeply?) into the original contract and
SPARC license between Sun and FPS. If the topic
is of interest to you, try finding someone who
was closer to the action to ask for information
(and hope they are not (or no longer) under NDA).
Otherwise, it is water under the bridge already.
Generally speaking, I am not "fond" of pointing out
anything in particular. In this case, history speaks
for itself.
dk |
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Hugh Fisher
Guest
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| Posted:
Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:19 am Post subject:
Re: SGI finally on its last legs? |
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Alex Johnson wrote:
| Quote: | Am I hearing you right? You are saying SGI stopped using MIPS
microprocessors in 96/97? They didn't offer an Itanium machine until
01/02. So what you are saying is that SGI didn't sell a single computer
for about 5 years.
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Nobody is saying such a silly thing.
Yes of course SGI sold computers for about 5 years before
Itanium. The problem was that the computers they were
selling were almost identical throughout because there was
no real development on the MIPS line. Onyx clock speeds
went from 250Mhz to, uh, 600Mhz? Yeah, we were really
impressed.
(As an example of what could have been done, here's a guide
to upgrading an SGI O2 with a faster MIPS processor from
QED:
<http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/o2cpumod.html>)
I'm not saying that Itanium was a mistake. That kind of
judgement call on the future of a CPU family is what
managers get paid for, and SGI had already bailed out
MIPS once.
But betting *your* future on *somebody else* introducing
a revolutionary new product on time...it was I think
reasonably obvious even back in 1997 that the consequences
of any delay in Itanium would be a lot worse for SGI than
they would be for Intel. Hence my complaint about not
having a Plan B. Maybe they just didn't have the resources?
cheers,
Hugh Fisher |
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Bill Davidsen
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Sep 22, 2005 12:15 am Post subject:
Re: SGI finally on its last legs? |
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Colonel Forbin wrote:
| Quote: | In article <%cBXe.305$4u4.139@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>,
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@deathstar.prodigy.com> wrote:
The other thing is that when you put 4 Opterons together you get very
nearly 4 times the performance with no glue chips. This is not so with
Itanium. So the Opteron price/performance lead is even better once we
are talking about real systems and not just 1 CPU.
Are these both the same config? You're not comparing one shared memory
config to one NUMA are you?
NUMA *is* shared memory. So is UMA. Technically unless all levels
of cache are shared, all shared memory systems are NUMA.
Also, SMP can be UMA or NUMA, and SMP refers to multitasking on multiple
CPUs, not memory access latency.
With respect to the poster you are criticizing, last I heard Opterons
require some kind of chipset support to operate at all, so nitpicking
over "glue" for SMP is a red herring.
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I take it from your characterization of my technical question as
"criticizing" that you have some strong reason for not wanting the
question to be answered. Your gush of argument about nomenclature seem
clearly intended to obfuscate the original question.
| Quote: |
I'm no fan of Itanic and I regret that SGI seems to have bet their farm
on it, but let's at least be fair.
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What is unfair about asking for details of the configurations used? It's
hard to find results credible when a request for details is met with
such hostility. Clearly there's something you don't want discussed.
| Quote: |
I'm not convinced that either VLIW or an ugly CISC emulated on a RISC
core are inherently architecturally elegant, but they seem to be what
we're stuck with at present, and they pay the utility bills.
As Dan Koren is fond of pointing out, SGI has made a number of strategic
blunders over the years, not the least of which was selling the CS6400
IP to Sun.
Considering Sun's idiotic blunders in software support for high end 3D
graphics (SPARC-2GT, anyone?) it's rather stunning that SGI regarded
Sun as competition in their core markets.
Given the way the SGI aggression against Sun turned out, it will be
interesting to see how Microsoft's "Sundown" ends up. If it's
anything like SGI's CS6400 debacle, Steve Ballmer could end up
reporting to Scooter.
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--
bill davidsen
SBC/Prodigy Yorktown Heights NY data center
http://newsgroups.news.prodigy.com |
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Ron Peterson
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Sep 23, 2005 4:15 pm Post subject:
Re: SGI finally on its last legs? |
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vince@offshore.ai wrote:
| Quote: | I think the following 4 ratios are each more important than per core
performance:
1) price/performance
2) performance/socket
3) performance/watt
4) performacne/rack
Opteron wins all 4 of these. I bet we see Opteron growing fast on the
top500.org now that they have dual-core chips. You want to bet on
Itanium?
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Then, why is Apple going with Intel?
--
Ron |
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CJT
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:59 pm Post subject:
Re: SGI finally on its last legs? |
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Ron Peterson wrote:
| Quote: | vince@offshore.ai wrote:
I think the following 4 ratios are each more important than per core
performance:
1) price/performance
2) performance/socket
3) performance/watt
4) performacne/rack
Opteron wins all 4 of these. I bet we see Opteron growing fast on the
top500.org now that they have dual-core chips. You want to bet on
Itanium?
Then, why is Apple going with Intel?
Maybe they got a deal that was hard to refuse. And the switch may have |
been planned (and largely executed -- I think they've already demo'd
systems) when Opteron was more in doubt.
--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net. |
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Casper H.S. Dik
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Sep 24, 2005 3:47 pm Post subject:
Re: SGI finally on its last legs? |
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CJT <abujlehc@prodigy.net> writes:
| Quote: | Then, why is Apple going with Intel?
Maybe they got a deal that was hard to refuse. And the switch may have
been planned (and largely executed -- I think they've already demo'd
systems) when Opteron was more in doubt.
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Also, it's a small step from going with Intel to going with Opteron,
as long as they didn't sign their soul away to Intel (which is known
to happen)
Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions. They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth. |
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Richard M.
Guest
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| Posted:
Tue Sep 27, 2005 8:15 am Post subject:
Re: SGI finally on its last legs? |
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Casper H.S. Dik wrote:
| Quote: | ...
Also, it's a small step from going with Intel to going with Opteron,
as long as they didn't sign their soul away to Intel (which is known
to happen)
Casper
Steve Jobs? Ha ha, Intel has to watch out that Steve doesn't steal THEIR |
souls!
--
// richard
http://www.imagecraft.com |
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