[Info-vax] OT: news from the trenches (re: Solaris)

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On Wed, 11 Mar 2015 12:27:24 -0400
Stephen Hoffman via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:

> > There's a lot more wrong with Intel than can ever be fixed.
> 
> Undoubtedly.  But that's not a dragon that VSI can slay.
> 
> In short, what's your alternative here?  SPARC just isn't it.

Agreed, maybe. I don't know who VMS customers are. You guys do. Would they
pay a premium for good hardware or do they want the warm fuzzy from being
able to run whatever they want on their hardware- today Linux, tomorrow
VMS, etc.

At the time SPARC boxes offered performance and management advantages over
Intel. Now they probably don't in most applications and that's not likely
to get better any time soon.

> Whether ARM — which has its own warts, not the least of which is the 
> confusion and the misuse of TrustZone, and that SBSA is only just 
> getting going — will see increasing success in the server space, or 
> whether the Mill CPU can get traction?

There was a time when everybody was up in arms (no pun intended) about data
center power costs including cooling being more than hardware costs. Intel
then told big sites they could run their server rooms at 100 degrees F.

At that point I was expecting to see more MIPS boxes in the server racks.
The Chinese have multiprocessor MIPS server boxes in production. They aren't
exporting as far as I know. As always the problem appears to be software.
Until Windows puts out MIPS Windows Server 2015 or ARM Windows Server 2015
Wintel has a strangledhold. I don't think you break out of that by buying
Wintel. I think you break out of it by saying "No" to both, if you have an
alternative. What we have today is a very unhealthy ecosystem. I'd like to
see that change. I'm in favor of anything that breaks us out of that or
gets us away from that. Choices are better than no choice.

> > I agree a good processor would be nice from a programmer's POV and from 
> > a healthy market POV.
> 
> Good and elegant processors can and often do fail in the market, 
> whether we're discussing VAX or Alpha or other designs.

So true.

> 
> > SPARC is an open design. I don't know who's fabbing them today but if 
> > it isn't Oracle itself than there's no R&D cost in using SPARC chips. 
> > They're very good and they have some great features but they are not as 
> > fast as the fastest Intel chips. If that doesn't matter than SPARC is a 
> > great design with a lot going for it.
> 
> The great thing about open standards: there are so many to choose from.

When it comes to processors, not really. MIPS is not open. ARM is not open.
Licenses are certainly affordable, but they're not open. Intel is not open.
About the only things open are SPARC and lately POWER.

POWER would be a nice platform to run VMS on, too, especially if IBM buys
VSI and whatever IP is left from HP.

> Right now, not running on the mainstream Windows x86-64 platform means 
> that whatever processor parts and server parts and system parts you 
> have is selling in lower volume, which means your prices are inherently 
> going to be somewhere between higher and much higher, which means you 
> inherently have a deeper competitive hole to dig yourself out of.

Ayup, as the wise man said.

> >> As for SPARC and Solaris, Oracle's business is apparently contracting
> >> — they're profitable and variously more profitable than they've been, 
> >> but  that's over fewer customers, per one of the more recent
> >> financial reports.
> > 
> > There has been some discussion on various Solaris mailing lists about 
> > all this. What you wrote is entirely intentional on Oracle's part. I 
> > would seem there is great ego involved and getting the bish fish with 
> > killer deals and ignoring small-mid sized companies is what it is all 
> > about now.
> 
> I'd wager that Oracle sales would be happy to sell to smaller firms, 
> but they're running into some stiff competition with the likes of 
> PostgreSQL, SQLite and other databases.

No, the signals and statements are very clear on this and the feedback is
in. Small and mid-sized shops that were good and dedicated Sun customers
can't even get a salesman to call back from Oracle. Either you're Fortune
500/1000 or you get a dial tone.

> > Oracle no longer markets or views SPARC as a general platform, it's 
> > only used as an appliance engine for EXA-boxes (Oracle database 
> > appliances, etc.) Solaris will eventually probably go away because of 
> > this "strategy."
> > 
> > A shame, because Solaris is a nice OS and the servers are very well 
> > thought out and well made. OpenBoot is great. SPARC is a great 
> > platform.  And Solaris really does run better on it than on X86. You 
> > can feel it.
> 
> Oracle is undoubtedly looking at their costs and their revenues, and 
> particularly at the associated trends.

From what I read and hear most of the ex Sun customers don't agree with
that assessment. You're thinking like a businessman but Oracle (the company)
is not a business. It's an ego trip, a diamond ring, and a gold watch. It's
all about Larry. If you listen to Larry he is simply not interested in
small potatoes and he has enough cash to run the Sun acquisition into the
ground and not lose sleep over it.

But if we talk about cost and revenue then what drives it obviously is the
data processing consumer. IT is a cost, it's not a differentiator like it
used to be, and it's most of all an annoyance. We come around to this over
and over but the bottom line seems to be commoditization of hardware and
software and where do you go from there. It's very difficult and perhaps
impossible for quality products to exist in that marketplace where the
consumer is driven by lower and lower costs as what defines good, better,
best. Things that work, are highly available, secure, manageable, etc. are
nice and all, but if they cost anything (Linux is free, remember) then
they're just too damn expensive. Free trumps good.
 
> FWIW and if processor elegance is of general interest to you, maybe 
> have a look at the ARMv8-vintage architecture, within the current crop 
> of potential choices.

I find ARM ugly. I know it has its fans but for a RISC machine it is way
too complicated and getting worse.

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