Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

hulitu wrote: post #3

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

(200x) "Never bet against x86" -> (202x) "Never bet against ARM"

> (200x) "Never bet against x86" -> (202x) "Never bet against ARM" Citation needed. There is only 1 workstation maker with ARM: Apple.

nvidia dgx spark?

also, system76 has one: https://system76.com/desktops/thelio-astra-a1.1-n1/configure

also, dell: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/dell-pro-m...

HP is coming soon, will be called `ZGX Nano AI Station` apparently

Also lenovo: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/workstations/thinkstation-p-s...

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#5

Post by throw0101c » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

> Solaris, meanwhile, which had long been available on x86, saw its “own” ISA SPARC live on in the server space until roughly 2017 or so, and was even briefly available as open source until Oracle did its thing.

Maybe worth noting that SPARC was (is?) licensable:

* https://sparc.org

OpenSPARC is under GPL2.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12578083

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#6

Post by dboreham » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

Note that the rise of Linux was caused by the rise of low cost, high performance x86 CPUs. There was a period of time when it was obvious you could get much more bang for the buck from x86, but there wasn't a viable OS to use (for servers). Yes NT existed, and we shipped binaries for NT but it was always an awkward fit to run server software on NT. So Linux, which at the time was kind of crappy (unreliable, didn't have threading) was improved by various vendors' efforts to the point where they could re-target their server products into PC-class hardware. Sun was sunk by the people who were downstream in the value chain leading back to Sun's revenue working hard to design Sun out of the loop, by means of PC-class hardware and the Linux OS.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#7

Post by afr0ck » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:18 PM UTC

hulitu wrote: post #3

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

(200x) "Never bet against x86" -> (202x) "Never bet against ARM"

> (200x) "Never bet against x86" -> (202x) "Never bet against ARM" Citation needed. There is only 1 workstation maker with ARM: Apple.

There are Qualcomm laptops now I believe (at least that's what I heard when I was last working for them). NXP also made some boxes (I own a bunch of them). The server market is also growing with Ampere and Cavium (now Novell) which I have both.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#8

Post by PaulHoule » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:18 PM UTC

hulitu wrote: post #3

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

(200x) "Never bet against x86" -> (202x) "Never bet against ARM"

> (200x) "Never bet against x86" -> (202x) "Never bet against ARM" Citation needed. There is only 1 workstation maker with ARM: Apple.

You can get ARM-based PCs and laptops. Thing is so far they all suck except for Apple right now.

I sure as hell hope that if Qualcomm even comes close to parity with other platforms they change their name because I'm going to have a hard time associated Snapdragon and their other products with anything that is quality. So far these are for desktop CPUs what

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant

is for cars. On the other hand, Intel is doing everything it can to keep the x86 platform from advancing which will let even the laggards catch up.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#9

Post by cayleyh » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

afr0ck wrote: post #7

hulitu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (200x) "Never bet against x86" -> (202x) "Never bet against ARM" Citation needed. There is only 1 workstation maker with ARM: Apple.

There are Qualcomm laptops now I believe (at least that's what I heard when I was last working for them). NXP also made some boxes (I own a bunch of them). The server market is also growing with Ampere and Cavium (now Novell) which I have both.

Also AWS Graviton and Google Axion servers & VMs on those clouds

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#10

Post by rjsw » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #6

Note that the rise of Linux was caused by the rise of low cost, high performance x86 CPUs. There was a period of time when it was obvious you could get much more bang for the buck from x86, but there wasn't a viable OS to use (for servers). Yes NT existed, and we shipped binaries for NT but it was always an awkward fit to run server software on NT. So Linux, which at the time was kind of crappy (unreliable, didn't ha…

UNIX was available for x86 systems for several years before Linux was released.