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Oracle Won't Abandon SPARC, Says Ellison
Posted by
timothy
on Thu May 07, 2009 08:50 PM
from the this-intermediation dept.
from the this-intermediation dept.
fm6 writes "When the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems was announced, it was widely assumed that Oracle was interested only in Sun's software technology, and would sell or discontinue all its hardware businesses. Larry Ellison, in an interview just posted on the Oracle web site, says that's not what's going to happen. In particular, SPARC isn't going anywhere (PDF): 'Once we own Sun we're going to increase the investment in SPARC. We think designing our own chips is very, very important. Even Apple is designing its own chips these days.'"
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Are You Really Prepared for the Hardware Market? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Are You Really Prepared for the Hardware Market (Score:5, Interesting)
Oracle, on the other hand, is extremely good and marketing. They are especially good at marketing to business. They are also good at knowing what businesses want (or alternately, making business people want what they have). I don't like Oracle, but I have to say this may be the best thing that's happened for Sparc in a long time.
Parent
Re:Are You Really Prepared for the Hardware Market (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Are You Really Prepared for the Hardware Market (Score:5, Funny)
WOw, I didnt know oracle was buying Sun.
I wonder will this increase oracles usage on Solaris
I'm going to bookmark this thread and reference whenever someone says "there's no such thing as a stupid question."
1. If you scrolled down this far, you would have seen the link to the story about Oracle buying Sun titled "Oracle buys Sun" or any of the dozen related stories on slashdot or other sites including mainstream news.
2. Solaris on SPARC is already the largest base for deployment of Oracle.
I kindly request you change your handle from t3chn0n3rd to something that doesn't imply a familiarity with the technology world.
If you have recently been in a coma I apologize for being so blunt.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just a minor nitpick, but knowing what your customers want is part of the marketing. Marketing is not just advertising, though many seem to forget that.
Re:Are You Really Prepared for the Hardware Market (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, how are you going to mitigate the blitzkrieg campaign IBM has launched against SPARC [slashdot.org] while you're busy with the merger details?
Interesting choice of the word blitzkrieg to characterize the marketing campaign. I think it's very appropriate.
Blitzkrieg [wikipedia.org] was a tactic to concentrate a large fast assault on the weakest part of the enemy, disregarding the flanks and trying to avoid the strong points.
It had success early on for the Germans, it was not something that could easily be maintained and after a year or so the allies were able to adapt to counter those types of attacks.
Lets not forget who won the war.
IBM is trying to take advantage of the uncertainty some people have with the merger to grab some of Sun's hardware business.
Parent
Well, if you want to stretch the anology (Score:5, Interesting)
Germany was a small country fighting the whole world. They lost not so much because blitzkrieg wasn't a valid tactic but because it is hard to win a battle when you fight a million soldiers and the enemy has a million in reserve.
But in this case, it is IBM who is the giant. So if you want to compare things, this is the D-day landings by the free-world/IBM vs the much beleagured Nazi's/Sun who is fighting to many battles on to many fronts and who just can't keep up with the tech race.
Analogies, you really shouldn't stretch them to far or they turn against you.
Parent
Designing chips (Score:5, Insightful)
"Even Apple is designing its own chips these days."
Unlike Oracle, I think Apple is traditionally a hardware company.
I wish them the best carrying on the Sun baton.
Re:Designing chips (Score:4, Funny)
"Even Apple is designing its own chips these days."
Unlike Oracle, I think Apple is traditionally a fashion accessory company.
I wish them the best carrying on the Sun baton.
There, fixed that for you.
Parent
Re:Designing chips (Score:5, Insightful)
that's not traditionally, that's lately.
Would you really consider an Apple II to be a fashion accessory?
Parent
Re:Designing chips (Score:5, Funny)
Would you really consider an Apple II to be a fashion accessory?
Well, maybe the IIc. I remember watching teachers walking around looking smug while carrying those. ;)
Parent
Re:Designing chips (Score:4, Interesting)
No, but arguably starting with Mac or Lisa. It's pushing the metaphor I'll admit in the sense that you wouldn't wear a Macintosh the way you'd wear an iPod. But the appeal of the Mac and the Lisa was as much or more fashion and style as it was practical.
Parent
Practicality and Fashion (Score:4, Insightful)
"But the appeal of the Mac and the Lisa was as much or more fashion and style as it was practical."
That's an interesting statement, and it betrays more about you than about the topic we're discussing. I remember back when I went to school and the schoolwork our teachers handed out suddenly changed from photocopied hand-written stuff to neatly layouted, professionally looking stuff. That was when the Mac came out and normal people were suddenly able to use computers in a meaningful way.
You're a geek. You don't care about normal people, because you were perfectly happy with DOS or whatever you were using. To you, all that stuff that made computers usable for everyone else was just "fashion".
You were as wrong then as you are now.
To you, the iPod is a fashion statement because you were happy with the MP3 players that came before the iPod. To most people, those were unusable, bulky pieces of crap. You were happy with cell phones before the iPhone came out. Most people hated their cell phones and used them only for the most basic things.
Perhaps creating things normal people can actually use seems like "fashion" to you, but most people don't use these devices for their own sake; they don't enjoy learning complex stuff just to learn complex stuff. They want to get stuff done, and all of those things that you like, all those ways you can tinker with your toys actually only get in their way.
Apple's success is not about fashion and style, it is about normal people getting stuff done.
Parent
Re:Designing chips (Score:5, Funny)
Would you really consider an Apple II to be a fashion accessory?
*dons sunglasses*
Ohhhhh yeah. [chopshopstore.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but compared to PCs of the era I could probably get away with calling the SE/20 or SE/30 fashion accessories.
They were certainly great little machines too, but style was key (and that's where you start hearing the anecdotes about Steve micromanaging the UI design of everything.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, but compared to PCs of the era I could probably get away with calling the SE/20 or SE/30 fashion accessories.
They were certainly great little machines too, but style was key (and that's where you start hearing the anecdotes about Steve micromanaging the UI design of everything.)
Odd, since Jobs had left the company (ie. been fired) by then.
Re:Designing chips (Score:4, Funny)
Odd, since Jobs had left the company (ie. been fired) by then.
That's why it was safe to start talking about it.
Parent
Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
I love the line about "even Apple" is designing its own chips. One could say "even Sun" sells Intel.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, of course he's going to say that - he's not just going to say "well, we're planning on axing 20,000 jobs and kissing bye-bye to the SPARC line". He has to at least maintain the *illusion* that they're going to keep producing SPARC chips.
I love the line about "even Apple" is designing its own chips. One could say "even Sun" sells Intel.
Sure, buy a company and kill off their highest revenue generating, and highest margin products which coincidentally are chosen more than any other platform to deploy your own database product. That's real smart.
Anyone that thought it would make sense to kill off sparc doesn't have a clue or is just likely spreading IBM FUD.
Parent
Re:Of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Servers were Sun's highest margin stuff? No wonder they plummeted and got bought. But if Oracle doesn't find value in offering servers bundled with software, one would wonder why IBM does. It's pretty clear that servers are now second fiddle to IBM's software business.
Is it just me or was he explicit about maintaining Sparc, but said nothing about x86 servers? I'll have to find the rest of the interview on Reuters.
Parent
Re:Of course (Score:4, Informative)
Servers were Sun's highest margin stuff? No wonder they plummeted and got bought.
I said highest margin products, meaning not software or services. The SPARC line of servers is higher margin than their x86 line.
Sun's services revenue [rackserverdeals.com] has grown to be almost what their products revenue is over the years. While they're not as big as IBM Global Services, the combination of Sun's services and Oracle's will give them a leg up.
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Re:Of course (Score:5, Informative)
I said highest margin products, meaning not software or services. The SPARC line of servers is higher margin than their x86 line.
It better have damn good margins. Intel, and to a lesser extent AMD, can amortize their R&D and fab costs over a zillion units. Meanwhile, last quarter [theregister.co.uk] Sun sold 60000 servers, 28000 of which were x64, leaving only 32000 SPARC systems. Again, of the SPARC systems $500m revenue was for the Sun-Fujitsu SPARC enterprise products using Fujitsu SPARC64 chips, and $300m revenue for their own Niagara systems. So yeah, with those revenues they better have damn good margins if they are going to spend more than a pittance on R&D.
It wouldn't surprise me if they sell the rest of the SPARC chip business to Fujitsu pretty soon, provided Fujitsu wants it. That doesn't of course mean they would be killing SPARC, just that they'd be expanding the current Sun-Fujitsu deal to cover all SPARC chips.
As for Ellison's comments, his job at the moment is obviously to convince Sun shareholders to approve the deal, some of which might well have some sentimental attachment to the SPARC business. I wouldn't trust what he says wrt Sun for one second, at least until the deal is through.
As for services, with hardware increasingly commoditized, that's the obvious way to go. It's no surprise that the remaining survivors of the unix wars, IBM & HP, are both heavily into services.
Parent
Re:Of course (Score:4, Interesting)
For as long as I can remember, Apple has been designing and outsourcing their own chips. Be it in the form of custom ROMs or VLSIs wich Apple is a big user of.
Sort of a weird line coming from my boss whose also on Apple's board of directors.
What I think he meant was to emphasize that while Apple uses Intel and makes it's software (like Oracle), they also design their own chips (more so where the AIM alliance's desktop grade PPC was viable).
Parent
Re:Of course (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple is starting to design their own chips, more specifically it appears for their iPhone and iPod ranges(no news so far on they trying it for PCs and I don't expect any). They've hired some heavy hitters from AMD, and made some noise in the press about it. It's fairly recent and they haven't to the best of my knowledge released anything about it yet.
Presumably they're after technology which will provide them with a competetive advantage in the performance/battery life arenas.
For the same reasons, the idea
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For as long as I can remember, Apple has been designing and outsourcing their own chips. Be it in the form of custom ROMs or VLSIs wich Apple is a big user of.
Nobody is impressed by a "custom ROM" (and nobody uses a non-programmable ROM any more, and few even use a non-electronically-erasable one) and VLSI just means "Very Large Scale Integration" ... the integration of thousands of transistors on a single chip. It's also a company that put together a lot of "custom" silicon for Apple. But in the chip industry nothing is ever a one-off, and SOP is to have a library of cores which are integrated into "custom" solutions for different customers; the custom part is w
mmmmm chips (Score:5, Funny)
hell, even doritos make their own chips
Re:mmmmm chips (Score:5, Funny)
No, they don't!
It's the big secret of the snack-food world. People have been killed for revealing it. They are actually made by *loud crash*
Oh crud, they found me! HELP M#*%(&#*# NO CARRIER
Parent
Re:mmmmm chips (Score:5, Funny)
hell, even doritos make their own chips
Yeah, but their performance makes even Cyrix look good.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah. At least Cyrix tastes of *something* (silicon). And they are quite crunchy too.
Mmmhhh... chips...
My theory why: multiprocessors (Score:5, Interesting)
So, just dump more processors in a box, and optimise the processor's design to your needs.
Apple figured it out, and Oracle's not stupid. This should work until the next big jump in processor design.
RS
Re:My theory why: multiprocessors (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been saying for years that we're about to reach the end of the line in terms of Moore's law. So far they've all been proven wrong, and scaling continues unabated.
Dumping processors in a box is "easy", but multicore programming is not easy. The software tools are not there yet. Not to mention, you need deep pockets to roll your own multicore IC and build up the requisite software ecosystem. Just look at how much trouble Sony had with Cell. Everybody is watching to see if Intel will succeed with Larrabee.
Now Oracle may have good reason to be interested in Sun's Niagara. Database applicances, perhaps.
And where does Apple come into this, exactly? PA Semi's focus is on a totally different market segment.
Parent
Re:My theory why: multiprocessors (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about unabated. It's been progressing, but we hit a bump, and all the sudden it was all about multicore and such rather than just continuing to double the clock speed every year or two.
Look at the palpable hump in this graph [wordpress.com].
Parent
Re:My theory why: multiprocessors (Score:4, Informative)
Moore's law [wikipedia.org] involves transistor count, not clock speed. Note the graph in the WP article.
But I agree that the infernal P4 got the industry to rethink clock speed as the be-all and end-all of microprocessing. Leakage at 90nm and below was a big problem, too.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Moore's Law (more like Moore's Observation) refers to transistor count, not clock frequency... and multicore does nothing to slow that down.
Re:My theory why: multiprocessors (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been saying for years that we're about to reach the end of the line in terms of Moore's law. So far they've all been proven wrong, and scaling continues unabated.
Unless you know something I don't, you can't make a silicon wire smaller than the width of a single atom, so there is definitely a physical limit that we aren't that far away from. I've read that practically, the limit is 4nm for silicon nanowires. That means that if we're at 45nm today (Intel's 32nm chips are slated for 2009), and we're assuming size shrinks 50% every 18 months, in less than 72 months we'll have reached the practical lower limit for silicon features. Even assuming that you can make silicon chips with wires the width of a single atom, given that the atomic radius of Silicon is 110 pm, that only gives 144 months.
In addition to that, at 3.2GHz, light in a vacuum can only travel about 9.36 centimeters per cycle. Given a dialetric constant for the Si02 used in chip manufacturing of 3.9, you can calculate the velocity of propagation of the electromagnetic waves through the Silicon as about 50.6% of C. Therefore, at 3.2 GHz, the electromagnetic waves inside the chip can only propagate about 4.7 centimeters per cycle. You also can lose a bit depending on the switching speed of the transistors, but they actually become faster the smaller they are, so the real limiter is the propagation speed.
You've probably noticed that we haven't had any really major jumps in the clock speeds of consumer processors since about 2002. Intel originally thought they'd be able to scale the Pentium 4 Netburst architecture to about 10GHz, bu they ran into a frequency ceiling at about 4GHz.
In short, unless there is a major materials breakthrough, or materials change, I would expect Moore's law to hold for the next five years or so, but not much longer after that. We're rapidly approaching the physical limits.
Parent
Change in the wind.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel is going to have trouble competing on battery life with ARM, or even PowerPC. Going into the future, we are going to see more ARM based netbooks (and they are going to be more usable), and the already common ARM handheld device is going to become more powerful. Suddenly there is going to be a need for software that runs on more than one architecture again. This is a good thing, in my opinion: it means x86 will not necessarily be the dominant processor forever into the future.
Re:Change in the wind.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you amplify on this? I tried an intel-based netbook recently and was pretty dismayed at the performance. I have an ARM-based music server running Linux, and although it's fine for the purpose I'm using it for, it feels agonizingly slow when I ssh in and do things on the command line -- I shudder to imagine what it would be like running Gnome and OOo or Firefox on that CPU. It seems unlikely to me that anyone could make an ARM-based netbook with acceptable performance any time in the near future, unless they were using software much more lightweight than Gnome, OOo, and Firefox. And yet I hear people talking as though ARM-based netbooks will be on the market within a year or something. What am I missing here? Is it all vaporware? Are clock speeds of ARM chips improving at some fantastic rate? It's one thing to run software like iPhone apps that are designed from scratch for a low-end CPU, but I just don't see how it's going to happen with a more traditional desktop software stack.
Parent
Re:Change in the wind.... (Score:5, Informative)
So the fact that the ARM in your computer is slow is no reflection on every other ARM (also, if it is really that slow on the command line, the problem might be you don't have enough RAM. Realistically the command line was supported by chips running 1 at megahertz. You might want to check to see if stuff keeps getting swapped out). ARM can be fast or it can be slow, it can be anything you want it to be. It is a much more flexible design than the x86.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Larry Ellison's "oh snap" quote (Score:5, Funny)
Ellison always finds ways to throw tiny daggers at Microsoft.
Re:Larry Ellison's "oh snap" quote (Score:5, Funny)
Ellison always finds ways to throw tiny daggers at Microsoft.
Very unwise move when the opponent can throw huge chairs.
Parent
Good for routers? (Score:5, Insightful)
While Oracle is big, I kind of doubt that they could ever keep up with Intel. Even in turn-key appliance servers (sort of an iMac of databases, pre-configured computer), Intel/AMD will outstrip them in performance and they won't be able to stay up to date.
The only place I can think that this would be useful is routers. In a turn-key appliance like that that does a very specialized job (especially one that requires custom silicon to do the routing fast enough), SPARC could make sense. It would make it harder to steal their software (because you'd have to run on SPARC). It would give them total control (no need to source processors from external companies). They could even build the SPARC cores into the same chips that hold all the magic high-speed routing magic.
SPARC could be useful, but I doubt they'll try and compete in the general market.
This is just off the top of my head. Is there something special about SPARC that would make it remarkably good at some specific application that Oracle uses?
Re:Good for routers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
More than routers (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not routers -- it's specialty appliances.
Take for instance your GPU -- it's just a processor that's tuned to do one specific task. Now, imagine that Oracle could take Sun's experience to customize a chip for the type of instructions that their database used a lot. Sure, the chip might not compete on all tasks, but if they could give a simple drop-in oracle appliance (or even a mysql appliance, and make money by selling hardware and support for it), they might have a reason to stay in the hardware business.
Now, I don't think that they should actually make the chips -- just design them for the right balance of power consumption / integer performance / floating point / cache / whatever makes sense for their applications.
Oh -- and to answer your question -- Sun is Oracle's recommended software platform. And Sun bought the Cray assets from SGI -- the E10k and other 5 digit models are descendants of that line. SPARC are highly reliable, high performance processors (or at least, they were back when I used to work on Suns ... from 1995-2003) -- but it's like RAID -- if you can throw 10 cheaper processors at it, do we really need the one big one? And that all depends on what you're trying to run on it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Now, I don't think that they should actually make the chips -- just design them
I don't think Sun has ever manufactured chips. They just design them and outsource the manufacturing. Ellison says they will continue to do that in the PDF linked in the summary.
Anyone betting on Microsoft buying out AMD? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll wager this character "!"
I have a funny remark regarding what Ballmer is doing but my post would be tagged as flamebait, so I'll just write the clencher: Toilet paper.
Why abandon SPARC? (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't that sound like they did actually want to keep all the Sun's hardware business including SPARC from the very beginning?
You guys aren't getting it. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Oh you want support for a database product on commodity hardware? Well we have this little MySQL thing you can use.
Oh you want to continue to run Oracle? Well that is now only supported on our new line of SPARC hardware."
Oracle can now (and will) sell you the entire database from sand to sql results at whatever price they deem acceptable to themselves this quarter. You thought license costs were crazy before? Well now they come with official hardware and support contracts for the box.
Database Processing Unit (Score:4, Interesting)