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Sun Microsystems, AMD to Team Up
Sun Microsystems and AMD to Team Up??
[blockquote]By DON CLARK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In a partnership that ties the fates of two of Silicon Valley's highest-profile underdogs, Sun Microsystems Inc. Monday will announce a broad alliance with Advanced Micro Devices Inc., a relationship that could have a major impact on both companies' battles against larger competitors.
Sun, struggling to compete more effectively with computers that use Intel Corp.'s microprocessors, plans to make server systems using a new AMD chip called Opteron. Sun and AMD will collaborate in several other areas, too, including adapting Sun's Solaris operating system to take advantage of advanced features of Opteron that aren't available on Intel's most popular chips.
The partnership, to be formally announced by the chief executives of both companies at the annual Comdex computer-industry trade show in Las Vegas, has broader elements that are more likely to pay off than many past technology alliances, analysts said.
For AMD, the arrangement stands to help the company make inroads against industry leader Intel in corporate computer rooms, where Sun has a major presence. For Sun, whose long-term viability is one of the hottest topics in Silicon Valley, AMD's chips provide a new weapon to counterattack against competitors such as computer titan Dell Inc.
"It really removes a lot of doubt about where Sun is going," said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64, a market-research firm in Saratoga, Calif.
The main battleground is over servers, the midsize computers that manage most computing chores for businesses. Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., built its server business around a proprietary chip line called Sparc and a version of the Unix operating system called Solaris. One selling point of Sun's chips is their ability to handle 64 bits of data at a time. That allows the use of software that taps into larger pools of memory, and is an advantage in heavy-duty computing chores over earlier 32-bit chips, which are more widely used.
But Intel, the maker of the microprocessors used in most PCs, has rapidly increased the performance of 32-bit chips. Servers using that technology, and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows or the Linux operating system, are well-suited for fast-growing applications such as managing Web sites.
Scott McNealy, Sun's chief executive, has derided rivals such as Dell for simply reselling technology developed by others. But amid a string of quarterly losses and revenue declines, Sun eventually expanded its product line with some low-end servers that use Intel chips and can run Linux or Solaris.[/blockquote]<i>Submitted by edcentric</i>
[blockquote]By DON CLARK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In a partnership that ties the fates of two of Silicon Valley's highest-profile underdogs, Sun Microsystems Inc. Monday will announce a broad alliance with Advanced Micro Devices Inc., a relationship that could have a major impact on both companies' battles against larger competitors.
Sun, struggling to compete more effectively with computers that use Intel Corp.'s microprocessors, plans to make server systems using a new AMD chip called Opteron. Sun and AMD will collaborate in several other areas, too, including adapting Sun's Solaris operating system to take advantage of advanced features of Opteron that aren't available on Intel's most popular chips.
The partnership, to be formally announced by the chief executives of both companies at the annual Comdex computer-industry trade show in Las Vegas, has broader elements that are more likely to pay off than many past technology alliances, analysts said.
For AMD, the arrangement stands to help the company make inroads against industry leader Intel in corporate computer rooms, where Sun has a major presence. For Sun, whose long-term viability is one of the hottest topics in Silicon Valley, AMD's chips provide a new weapon to counterattack against competitors such as computer titan Dell Inc.
"It really removes a lot of doubt about where Sun is going," said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64, a market-research firm in Saratoga, Calif.
The main battleground is over servers, the midsize computers that manage most computing chores for businesses. Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., built its server business around a proprietary chip line called Sparc and a version of the Unix operating system called Solaris. One selling point of Sun's chips is their ability to handle 64 bits of data at a time. That allows the use of software that taps into larger pools of memory, and is an advantage in heavy-duty computing chores over earlier 32-bit chips, which are more widely used.
But Intel, the maker of the microprocessors used in most PCs, has rapidly increased the performance of 32-bit chips. Servers using that technology, and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows or the Linux operating system, are well-suited for fast-growing applications such as managing Web sites.
Scott McNealy, Sun's chief executive, has derided rivals such as Dell for simply reselling technology developed by others. But amid a string of quarterly losses and revenue declines, Sun eventually expanded its product line with some low-end servers that use Intel chips and can run Linux or Solaris.[/blockquote]<i>Submitted by edcentric</i>
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/me shivers