40 ms·

I don't know that SPARC was such a performance loser to x86 so much as Intel simply having a commanding lead in process technology at the time. Even Apple capit

I don't know that SPARC was such a performance loser to x86 so much as Intel simply having a commanding lead in process technology at the time. Even Apple capitulated. That lead gave them a market domination that allowed them to reinvest (think Amazon) in their own fabs. x86 was a dog that Intel spent $1B/yr on improving so that your code ran fast. They took that strategy to the bank for as long as they could which was at least a decade longer than anyone thought they could. As I think you're pointing out, Java wasn't a pivot. It was rather an excuse not to pivot. Sun really needed a Gates style pivot with Internet Explorer or a Bezos style pivot with his services manifesto. Instead you got a ponytail. Also, before missing the cloud, Sun missed routers. Still, they were a pretty successful failure. We should all fail so well.

titzer 5y ago
Oh, it was totally. Sun lost at least two generations of microarchitectures to mismanagement. They resisted doing out-of-order execution far too long and they just could never keep up with single-core performance. Even process technology would not have been able to rescue the comparatively sophomoric micro-architecture. Intel and AMD and IBM just totally outclassed them.
Melkman 5y ago
Sun didn't miss routers... The part of Stanford University Network that went to do routers used an other name: Cisco.
hapless 5y ago
SPARC rapidly became a performance loser to x86. And, at the time, Intel had no process advantage. None at all. Intel Pentium II was almost exactly 100% as fast as UltraSPARC IIi, on the same process (350 nm), at about 1/20th the cost. That was the last competitive Sun SPARC product, after that they were all brutally slow. The less said about US III and US IV, the better. By the time that Sun put itself on the auction block, their internal CPUs weren't even good enough for legacy customers. They were obliged to start re-selling Fujitsu SPARC products just to keep SPARC loyalists inside the tent.
- CalChris 5y ago
  You're right. When I compare SPARC with x86, they seem to have the same process node at roughly the same time. I probably meant manufacturing rather than process. Intel at the time was colossal. It was possible for an innovator like Transmeta to come along and develop low power. But then Intel could motor past them on a marketing promise, engineering and finally out manufacturing them. This manufacturing prowess was a lot of the reason for Apple's PowerPC to x86 switch in 2005. Moreover, advantage begat advantage until x86 ran into various walls. Things have changed since and now TSMC, Transmeta's fab then, is the new colossus. And Apple has even dumped x86 for their own ArmV8 designs (manufactured by TSMC).
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Didn't the UltraSPARC lines have greater throughput as compared to x86 offerings, even when they couldn't keep up on single threaded performance?
  - hapless 5y ago
    Sun experimented with an UltraSPARC-branded ultra-wide CMT design in their last days -- Niagara. It was very unsuccessful, because, realistically, what can you do with 32 low-performance cores that you couldn't do with 8 high-performance cores? The answer turned out to be "nothing" ------------ The "conventional" UltraSPARC designs -- US IIi, US IIIi, US IV, and the canceled "Rock" project -- were just really very mediocre chips sold at tens of times the cost of a similar x86.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  It really is amazing that Sun and HP had the hubris to design their own RISC processors in SPARC and PA-RISC; everything that was wrong with the Unix workstation market in the 90s can be summed up there, in a way. Proprietary CPUs and custom repackagings of Unix, all slightly different, but in reality they weren't different enough to justify. And this just left room for Microsoft and Linux and x86 to just come up the middle and make them all obselete. Lots of vendors throwing around "open" this and "open" that but none of them meant it. Just try writing a GUI app for a Unix machine in the mid 90s. Motif was closed source, with licensing fees. Things like GTK and QT were still primitive. Xt was garbage. It was just a hodge podge of things with the assumption that anybody entering the market had hugely deep pockets. If they'd all just united around POWER architecture at least maybe they'd have had a chance?
adrian_b 5y ago
I have been using SPARC for a decade, in 1998-2007. In all this time all the SPARC servers and workstations that we had were ridiculously slow in comparison with Intel/AMD CPUs. Nevertheless they were used because there were a lot of EDA/CAD tools that were available only for Solaris. As soon as Cadence, Mentor etc. have ported their programs to Linux, SPARC was dead. Towards the end of that decade, the difference became extreme, my laptop with a 64-bit AMD Turion CPU could run a SPICE simulation much faster than a very large and very expensive multiprocessor SPARC server. Despite their slowness, the Sun or Fujitsu computers had many nice features before they became also available on Intel/AMD computers. For example, in 1998 I was impressed that the Sun workstation we had could be powered on and off from its keyboard, because this happened before this became normal also for Intel/AMD computers. At that time we still had PCs with PC/AT power supplies, not with ATX power supplies, so power on and off had to be done from traditional switches.
- Cockbrand 5y ago
  I remember impressing my boss in about '97 - I got the first Mac in the company as my work computer, and I could switch it on (and off again) with a dedicated key on the keyboard. That was unheard of in his PC-centric world. ATX power supplies did become popular soon after that, though.

titzer 5y ago

Oh, it was totally. Sun lost at least two generations of microarchitectures to mismanagement. They resisted doing out-of-order execution far too long and they just could never keep up with single-core performance. Even process technology would not have been able to rescue the comparatively sophomoric micro-architecture. Intel and AMD and IBM just totally outclassed them.

Melkman 5y ago

Sun didn't miss routers... The part of Stanford University Network that went to do routers used an other name: Cisco.

hapless 5y ago

SPARC rapidly became a performance loser to x86. And, at the time, Intel had no process advantage. None at all. Intel Pentium II was almost exactly 100% as fast as UltraSPARC IIi, on the same process (350 nm), at about 1/20th the cost. That was the last competitive Sun SPARC product, after that they were all brutally slow. The less said about US III and US IV, the better. By the time that Sun put itself on the auction block, their internal CPUs weren't even good enough for legacy customers. They were obliged to start re-selling Fujitsu SPARC products just to keep SPARC loyalists inside the tent.

CalChris 5y ago
You're right. When I compare SPARC with x86, they seem to have the same process node at roughly the same time. I probably meant manufacturing rather than process. Intel at the time was colossal. It was possible for an innovator like Transmeta to come along and develop low power. But then Intel could motor past them on a marketing promise, engineering and finally out manufacturing them. This manufacturing prowess was a lot of the reason for Apple's PowerPC to x86 switch in 2005. Moreover, advantage begat advantage until x86 ran into various walls. Things have changed since and now TSMC, Transmeta's fab then, is the new colossus. And Apple has even dumped x86 for their own ArmV8 designs (manufactured by TSMC).
aww_dang 5y ago
Didn't the UltraSPARC lines have greater throughput as compared to x86 offerings, even when they couldn't keep up on single threaded performance?
- hapless 5y ago
  Sun experimented with an UltraSPARC-branded ultra-wide CMT design in their last days -- Niagara. It was very unsuccessful, because, realistically, what can you do with 32 low-performance cores that you couldn't do with 8 high-performance cores? The answer turned out to be "nothing" ------------ The "conventional" UltraSPARC designs -- US IIi, US IIIi, US IV, and the canceled "Rock" project -- were just really very mediocre chips sold at tens of times the cost of a similar x86.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
It really is amazing that Sun and HP had the hubris to design their own RISC processors in SPARC and PA-RISC; everything that was wrong with the Unix workstation market in the 90s can be summed up there, in a way. Proprietary CPUs and custom repackagings of Unix, all slightly different, but in reality they weren't different enough to justify. And this just left room for Microsoft and Linux and x86 to just come up the middle and make them all obselete. Lots of vendors throwing around "open" this and "open" that but none of them meant it. Just try writing a GUI app for a Unix machine in the mid 90s. Motif was closed source, with licensing fees. Things like GTK and QT were still primitive. Xt was garbage. It was just a hodge podge of things with the assumption that anybody entering the market had hugely deep pockets. If they'd all just united around POWER architecture at least maybe they'd have had a chance?

adrian_b 5y ago

I have been using SPARC for a decade, in 1998-2007. In all this time all the SPARC servers and workstations that we had were ridiculously slow in comparison with Intel/AMD CPUs. Nevertheless they were used because there were a lot of EDA/CAD tools that were available only for Solaris. As soon as Cadence, Mentor etc. have ported their programs to Linux, SPARC was dead. Towards the end of that decade, the difference became extreme, my laptop with a 64-bit AMD Turion CPU could run a SPICE simulation much faster than a very large and very expensive multiprocessor SPARC server. Despite their slowness, the Sun or Fujitsu computers had many nice features before they became also available on Intel/AMD computers. For example, in 1998 I was impressed that the Sun workstation we had could be powered on and off from its keyboard, because this happened before this became normal also for Intel/AMD computers. At that time we still had PCs with PC/AT power supplies, not with ATX power supplies, so power on and off had to be done from traditional switches.

Cockbrand 5y ago
I remember impressing my boss in about '97 - I got the first Mac in the company as my work computer, and I could switch it on (and off again) with a dedicated key on the keyboard. That was unheard of in his PC-centric world. ATX power supplies did become popular soon after that, though.