Replies to post #43300 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[sgolds]

subzero, very smart move for Sun! This is what Apple should have done years ago, BTW. Sun is putting hardware resources into larger scale Opteron machines which will be positioned above the Xeon64 market, and they are going to sell Solaris on Xeon64 everywhere.

It is an interesting trend to watch. Intel is happy keeping Xeon at a market below Itanium; Sun has no problem with moving Opteron into the Itanium/Power/SPARC market. SPARC architecture is being wholly revised to stress massive multicore - if this does not pan out then the scalable Opteron systems will carry them.

Sun understands what Apple refuses to admit: They are a software company and need to be hardware agnostic.

Sun also understands the costs of competing in the processor wars. If future multicore SPARC designs prove to be costly or uncompetitive then Sun can drop them like a lead balloon because they are a software company.