rpasken@eas.slu.edu wrote:
> On Mar 13, 5:10 pm, Thomas Tornblom <tho...@Hax.SE> wrote:
>> Huge <H...@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:
>>> On 2007-03-13, Dennis Grevenstein <dennis.grevenst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> An Ultra60 is not a small machine IMHO. It's a pretty
>>>> heavy and solid machine.
>>> Also noisy and chucks out a lot of heat.
>> Yup, which is why I have just replaced mine with a small 1.5 GHz Via
>> C7 based shoebox, which is very quiet and draws around 40W, instead of
>> the 150 - 200W of the U60, besides beeing way faster :-)
>>
>>
>>
>>> I love it. )
>
> The Ultra-60 and the Blade-1000 both are large, heavy, noisy, power-
> sucking machines and the shuttle-type PC's indeed are smaller and
> quieter. If all you are doing is web-surfing and light develpment the
> shuttle-type PC's are a good choice, If you are doing heavy numerical
> work the Sparc's beat the PC's hands down. Using my radar analysis
> code and numerical modeling code it takes an AMD Opteron with 3 times
> the clock speed to equal the 900Mhz UltraSparc-III in my Blade 1000.
> Since I can buy a well-equiped Blade-1000 for under $400 I have a
> Blade-1000 at home. I can buy a Ultra-10 with a Creator-3D for $15 and
> put a $5 SiiG ATA-100 card along with 250gb disk in the Ultra-10 the
> Sparc wins on cost.
>

Need to be careful. Your 1000 and my 2000 have REAL III processors,
that is... the IIIcu. Considerably better performer (though it
needs more power/cooling) than the IIIi. I mention that just in
case somebody goes to Sun looking for something NEW with a
SPARC III processor... you won't be getting a IIIcu.

I'll admit, the IIIcu was a nice CPU. Shame Sun has created
such a huge gap now between the IIIi and the IV's.

(Granted, we may all be wanting an N2 by the end of the year)

With regards to Opterons, the w2100z, which I own one, and I like it,
can be had in some cases for $500 - $1000 in various
configurations... and it runs circles around my SB2000 (2x900Mhz).

My primary home workstation is a ZmazD2 (2x275 Opterons). It's
a SFF, but it's a bit loud. Should be able to assemble one with
4G and a 300G drive and 7600GT for about $2100. Add another $1000
if you want decent high end Quadro board.

Would be nice if Sun would release a BIOS for dual cores for the
w2100z (IBM uses the same board and does support dual core with
theirs as well as the daughter card swap to take it to
PCIe and SAS). Oh well... Sun just wants to sell you/me a new
box I guess.

Power consumption? Well my ZmaxD2 four way Opteron uses
a 300W power supply. I'll admit, it consumes power, but for
what you get out of it, it's worth it.

On 2007-03-19 14:56:33 +0000, Chris Cox <notccox@notairmail.net> said:

> I'll admit, the IIIcu was a nice CPU. Shame Sun has created
> such a huge gap now between the IIIi and the IV's.
>
> (Granted, we may all be wanting an N2 by the end of the year)

My guess is that all the "traditional" SPARCs (III, IV, IV+ etc) are
really dead now and the future will be Niagara-derived systems.

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007, Tim Bradshaw wrote:

> My guess is that all the "traditional" SPARCs (III, IV, IV+ etc) are really
> dead now and the future will be Niagara-derived systems.

I don't think I'd go that far. From ehat I've seen, Rock and its derivatives
shoiuld be pretty inetersting...

--
Rich Teer, SCSA, SCNA, SCSECA, OpenSolaris CAB member

CEO,
My Online Home Inventory

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URLs: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
http://www.myonlinehomeinventory.com

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:23:46 GMT Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Mar 2007, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
>
>> My guess is that all the "traditional" SPARCs (III, IV, IV+ etc) are really
>> dead now and the future will be Niagara-derived systems.
>
> I don't think I'd go that far. From ehat I've seen, Rock and its derivatives
> shoiuld be pretty inetersting...

What is Rock? I somehow doubt it competes with Opteron.

As a largely uninformed person, I tend to agree with Tim. Seems to me
it's either Opteron or Niagara and the rest will die.

-frank

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 09:56:33 -0500 Chris Cox <notccox@notairmail.net> wrote:
> Would be nice if Sun would release a BIOS for dual cores for the

Would be nice if Sun would release an OBP Opteron system.
-frank

On 2007-03-19 20:51:35 +0000, Frank Cusack <fcusack@fcusack.com> said:

> Would be nice if Sun would release an OBP Opteron system.

Yes, please!

On 2007-03-19 20:49:10 +0000, Frank Cusack <fcusack@fcusack.com> said:

> What is Rock? I somehow doubt it competes with Opteron.

It's the big-server multicore chip. I was including it in my
`Niagara-derived' set somewhat bogusly, which has lead to confusion:
sorry. I really should have said something like "CMT SPARCs".

>
> As a largely uninformed person, I tend to agree with Tim. Seems to me
> it's either Opteron or Niagara and the rest will die.

Neither have any serious support for big multi-CPU machines, I think -
I don't think Niagara has any at all, and (from limited knowledge) I
suspect no x86/x64 processor scales beyond 4 or 8 sockets. Rock will
support large machines (and they'll be pretty spectacular machines in
terms of number of cores / threads...)

--tim

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007, Frank Cusack wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:23:46 GMT Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 19 Mar 2007, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> >
> >> My guess is that all the "traditional" SPARCs (III, IV, IV+ etc) are really
> >> dead now and the future will be Niagara-derived systems.
> >
> > I don't think I'd go that far. From ehat I've seen, Rock and its derivatives
> > shoiuld be pretty inetersting...
>
> What is Rock? I somehow doubt it competes with Opteron.

Niagara's big brother, targeted for the data centre, rather than the edge.

--
Rich Teer, SCSA, SCNA, SCSECA, OpenSolaris CAB member

CEO,
My Online Home Inventory

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URLs: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
http://www.myonlinehomeinventory.com

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007, Frank Cusack wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 09:56:33 -0500 Chris Cox <notccox@notairmail.net> wrote:
> > Would be nice if Sun would release a BIOS for dual cores for the
>
> Would be nice if Sun would release an OBP Opteron system.

:s/nice/extremely nice/

I would *love* for my X4200 to have OBP!

--
Rich Teer, SCSA, SCNA, SCSECA, OpenSolaris CAB member

CEO,
My Online Home Inventory

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URLs: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
http://www.myonlinehomeinventory.com

On Mar 13, 11:54 am, Dennis Grevenstein <dennis.grevenst...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> den <dchang...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Space is limited for me. I've got enough space for a tower (I'm
> > thinking
> > about a U60) and a desktop (hence the U5).
>
> The U60 certainly is a more capable machine.
>
> > > gruss,
> > > Dennis
> > gruss? Did I type that?
>
> no. "gruss" is german and means somethings like "greetings" or
> "regards". I often forget to change to an english word at that
> point, sorry.
>
> > I'm not sure what I want to do with the systems. I'm thinking about
> > a backup server (buying cheap IDE disks seems simple enough),
> > a jumpstart server, and I also want to play with zones (sol10).
> > So I'm alittle confused. What would you recommend? My main
> > concern is space and power consumption/heat dissipation.
>
> An x86 system will give you more power for the price.
> If you want to go for a SPARC machine then there are
> better choices then an Ultra5. As far as space/price is
> important, nothing will beat the Ultra5. For a little
> more money, you can get the Blade 100/150 or one of the
> 1U servers like the Netra 105 or AC200.
> An Ultra60 is not a small machine IMHO. It's a pretty
> heavy and solid machine.
>
> > Thanks for your help,
> > Dennis.
>
> regards, (gruss,)
> Dennis
>
> --
> Don't suffer from insanity...
> Enjoy every minute of it.

Thanks for the advice. I lucked out after writing my last post and
found myself a Blade 100 locally. It's not very attractive compared
to the U60 but I'm pretty happy. IIRC I used the U60 (or was it the
U30?)
at school and I remember it being quite an attractive workstation.

There's something about an "engineer's style" of Sun's product
offerings
that appeals to me.

Regards,
Dennis.