New Better Server?

bpat1434

Apparently Sun has developed a server that outperforms any Xeon server by 5 times. It is also said to be able to take current clusters, and reduce their size by 50%, while raising efficiency like 80%. Crazy.... but hey... if it gets me a dedicated server cheaper 😉

Sun's new CoolThread servers

bpat1434

No one finds this the least bit interesting? It could potentially cut server costs in half!!! Wha!!!

pohopo

Here is some info I found from two other site where they their results were not at par with what Sun claims. I guess I don't see this as huge as Sun sees it.

Hardware In Review

Anandtech

bretticus

Personally, I'm sure it's very innovative but there's probably a good chunk of marketing hype involved, as usual. The claims seems a bit outrageous. In fact, I did a google query, "CoolThreads hype" and found this article by Hewlett Packard. Sure, they are competitors and bias as well, but reality usually ends up somewhere in the middle.

dalecosp

bpat1434 wrote:
No one finds this the least bit interesting? It could potentially cut server costs in half!!! Wha!!!

Doubtful ... how would Sun make any money, then? I doubt they'd settle for 50% of what the other guys are getting. More 'n likely, they're more expensive than a competing (Dell, HP, etc.) product.

Ahh, yes. $7,795.00, including a Sun System Pack. That's about 10X what I put into a server.

They DO run Solaris 10, though; a few peeps in 'Nixdom have decided that this is cool.

bpat1434

Well, I mean that over the course of time for serving companies could save money. If you've got something that takes 50% of the current space, that means for about the same price you can actually offer 2x the space or have 2x the customer base, which in turn brings in more money for essentially the same price with 1/2 the cost of the server.

It's an interesting thing to see Sun coming into the market with a "new" product that has the possibility to actually expand the web-dev bounds. If I had the money, I'd gobble one up in a heart beat to host my own sites!! But that's cuz I'm a sucker for the latest & greatest....

bretticus

If I had the money, I'd gobble one up in a heart beat to host my own sites!!

Does PHP even port a server for Solaris? I guess somebody has ported it.

bpat1434

Why would PHP not work on Solaris? Isn't it a Unix based OS?

pohopo

Speaking of Sun(s), they need to lose!! Go Lakers!

piersk

bretticus wrote:
Does PHP even port a server for Solaris? I guess somebody has ported it.

It's ported on both Intel and SPARC versions of Solaris

Sxooter

There are several ways to bottleneck a server. I/O subsystem bandwidth, memory bandwidth, cache hit ratio, and CPU horsepower.

While certain type of applications are CPU bound, many many more are memory or I/O bound.

A good example is the fact the PostgreSQL runs 2 to 4 times faster on a multi-way opteron than it does on a multiway xeon of the same class, due to memory bandwidth and access. Throwing more CPUs at a problem, can sometimes actually make a machine run slower due to switching contention.

That said, I think for certain kinds of applications (jboss servers, for instance) this multi-threaded sun CPU is a good idea.