Replies to post #13009 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[chipguy]

Until Sun starts shipping IPF boxes the talk of Solaris
on IPF is just bullsh*t. The OEMs who actually ship IPF
hardware either sell their own OS (HP-UX, VMS, etc) or
go with standard OSes (Linux, Windows). The only thing
that selling Solaris on their hardware would do would be
to send some customer dollars to Sun. It would not make
their offerings one iota more valuable. Intel realizes this
and its IPF OEM partners realize it. AFAICT the Sun talk
about Solaris on IPF is just empty blather to gain some
free ink in the trade press and maybe confuse potential
IPF customers in its user base and delay defections.

Ironically some day Sun might have to eat its own words
like it did when it went crawling to Microsoft. Sun has
so messed up its own SPARC MPU development that it
has had to turn to Fujitsu to get high end boxes that are
even remotely competitive. But Fujitsu has big plans
for IPF and won't spend its money on SPARC design
forever. At some point big SPARC64 boxes will stop
coming and Sun will either have to decide to rebadge
Fujitsu IPF boxes instead or get out of the high end
system business. If it is the former then obviously for
Sun it would be disastrous if Solaris wasn't already
running well on IPF.