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| Two years ago, in July
2002, I wrote an article called
Sun Users Waiting
for Fujitsu? in which I said that Fujitsu might be the only hope for Sun
customers who were suffering from Sun's inability or unwillingness to push
forward the SPARC performance envelope and keep pace with competing
architectures. Little did I imagine that it would actually take so long for this
to happen. In October 1993 in my article Are Sun's Days Numbered? I ran a report that Sun and Fujitsu were talking about collaborating on future SPARC chip developments and merging product lines. We had to wait till June 2004 for confirmation of this in a joint Sun and Fujitsu press release. Also in June 2004 came the announcement from Fujitsu that it would be shipping servers using its 5th generation 1.89 GHz SPARC64 processor in September. This is a SPARC processor which is 60% faster than any single SPARC processor which you can buy today from Sun, and it's the start of the roadmap for all forseeable future high performance SPARC servers from Sun. Here's the important part. If you have investments in SPARC servers then, looking ahead, it's going to be Fujitsu that delivers future enhancements in SPARC chip technology and not Sun. There's no one else left in this market who will come in as a white knight and save the SPARC market from being a dinosaur. You have to feel comfortable with that or start making plans to switch to another platform. Most of you won't be familiar with Fujitsu's track record in the SPARC market, and that's why I put together this article to pull together some snippets of SPARC History from our archives. Some Past SPARC Milestones by Fujitsu Fujitsu's SPARC products have left a weak impression in the minds of most Sun users. That's partly because the company's past efforts have been fragmented, disjointed and sometimes unsuccessful in the market. Within the SPARC systems segment the company has created and then killed or stealth marketed brands more often that Buffy the vampire slayer has saved the world from armaggedon. Fujitsu's SPARC systems companies and brands have included:- HAL Computer, turboSPARC, ICL, Amdahl, Fujitsu Siemens (in Europe), Fujitsu Technology Solutions (in the US) etc. 1993 - Fujitsu's European subsidiary ICL previewed its GoldRush Megaserver, a 64 SPARC CPU capable server, originally rated at 6,000 transactions/second. It ran Unix, but not Solaris. ICL later merged into Fujitsu Siemens Computers. 1995 - Fujitsu owned HAL Computer launched the industry's first workstations based on a 64 bit CPU, HAL's independently designed first generation SPARC64. HAL's workstations did run Solaris, but failed to make a dent in the Sun compatible market. Within a few years, Fujitsu closed down HAL and merged its server and chip technology into the short lived Fujitsu Technology Solutions, which then became Fujitsu Computer Systems. 1997 - Fujitsu Microelectronics's 32 bit TurboSPARC was a user installable upgrade chip for Sun's SPARCstation 5 2001 - Fujitsu's independently designed SPARC servers didn't suffer from the cache design problems in Sun's own systems (see the article Unsafe At Any Speed?). That was first sign that Fujitsu's combination of semiconductor and computer experience could deliver a vastly more reliable SPARC server than Sun's inexperienced designers who made a fundamentally bad design decision. 2002 - Fujitsu's SPARC servers started making headlines for their performance, as in this December 10, 2002 news story... "Fujitsu Technology Solutions Inc. today announced best-in-class results in industry-leading benchmarks on its PRIMEPOWER 850 SPARC compliant, Solaris compatible servers." 2003 - In October the pieces of the jigsaw started to come together. We reported... a news story today in JapanToday.com speculates that Sun Microsystems may reduce development costs by pooling resources with Fujitsu on the design of future high end SPARC servers. ...Later - in April 2007 - the results of this partnership emerged as the "SPARC Enterprise" product brand. Musing (2004) I'm reminded of the 25 year old battle between Intel and AMD in the x86 compatible chip market. In 1980 AMD was persuaded by Intel to drop its support for the competing 16 bit Z8000 processor which AMD was making as a second source to Zilog, and instead to support Intel's 8086. For over 20 years AMD struggled to make money from its x86 processors, and then Intel made a terrific blunder by launching a 64 bit CPU which was not x86 compatible. Now AMD owns the 64 bit x86 market and is on a roll with that product. In 2001 Sun lost its repuation for making reliable servers because of its badly designed cache memory which was sensitive to alpha particle radiation and which didn't include adequate error checking and correction. In the period 2001 to 2004 - Sun lost the performance lead of SPARC over Intel by late to market and badly executed semiconductor design. Fujitsu, a world leading chip company, now has products which can put SPARC back onto a competive track. Sun has tacitly admited that it will take a back seat in chip design and stick to tweaking the Solaris OS and marketing. Both jobs which Sun does well. Past setbacks with some SPARC products haven't stopped Fujitsu's support for this technology. They have kept plodding on when dozens of other server companies have exited the SPARC market. Without that long term investment and consistency - SPARC wouldn't have much of a future today. ...Fujitsu profile, ...Sun profile |
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