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

[lists at openmailbox.org]

On Fri, 13 Mar 2015 06:28:17 -0700 (PDT)
johnwallace4--- via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:

> What is it *specifically* about "other stuff" that makes "other stuff"
> high end and AMD64 (and compatibles) not high end? [Preferably without
> including IBM-style mainframes, but...]

I read the last part and forget the first part.

Because POWER is made by IBM and they are known to put out good everything.
SPARC was made by Sun and TI who also put out good stuff. Intel servers can
be made with anything, anyone can buy the chips and build a whitebox server.

Premium designs have cleanliness of architecture (and I can't overstate
the importance of this as a trickle down cause of quality through and
through), top build quality, better management features (maybe commodity
servers have caught up, I don't have any new ones to look at) and attention
to upward compatability.

For example SPARC32 code runs just fine on SPARC64 because the 32 bit
version had enough registers from the beginning (proper design) and can use
full length 64 bit regs in 32 bit mode on 64 bit hardware (also well
thought-out). You only need to go 64 bit SPARC for extended addressing
range. Of course it's running UNIX so it still suffers from the same ABI
bleedover issues as other commodity OS on Intel and the same brain-dead
limitations of not being able to mix 32 and 64 bit code mentioned in my
previous email. The ABI difference is less radical on SPARC than Intel but
it is still not insignificant.

A lot of this is only meaningful for people who care because they write
system code or work on the boxes. If you're just running end user
applications and never see the hardware or pop it open then I agree Intel
is good enough. But it will never be premium.

-- 
Please DO NOT COPY ME on mailing list replies. I read the mailing list.
RSA 4096 fingerprint 7940 3F02 16D3 AFEE F2F8  ACAA 557C 4B36 98E4 4D49