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Sun Exits High-End CPU Design
The New York Times reports that Sun has canceled its chronically delayed next generation SPARC CPU, codenamed "Rock":
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/sun-is-said-to-cancel-big-chip-project
The enterprise-class server processor chip business is extremely competitive and capital-intensive. The tough global economy is forcing some tough business decisions. I expect that IBM, in particular, will disproportionately benefit from this decision and should gain additional marketshare with its POWER and System z products.
But when I first heard this news I did not think about the market implications, the effect on IBM, what happens to Intel, etc. I immediately thought about the employment implications of this announcement. This cancellation is a major blow to the relatively small processor engineering community, and too many talented engineers are presumably losing their jobs. Whatever one might say about Sun now, the company has (and had) some of the best engineers for so many years. That part of the story needs to be reported, too.
UPDATE: IBM reacted quickly to the Itanium (HP) and SPARC (Sun) processor roadmap failures and broken promises, improving its offerings to encourage more migrations to IBM System z and POWER servers. Here's one example: http://www.ibm.com/systems/migratetoibm/systems/z. And another: http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/27613.wss.
UPDATE 2: Back at the end of April, Marketwatch reported (from a Japanese newspaper source) that Fujitsu is scrapping plans to develop next generation semiconductor technology on its own. The story refers to semiconductor fabrication but also (disturbingly) says that Fujitsu is cutting "other technologies that were in the development pipeline." Which ones? In contrast, IBM has state-of-the-art semiconductor factories and leads semiconductor design (and process) research and development.
| by Timothy Sipples | June 16, 2009 in Systems Technology Permalink |
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Comments
Good old IBM to the rescue--at least a company that can provide continuity and isn't a passing fad.
And, since this blog was made prior to the news of OpenSolaris for z/VOS, which can also run Windows server edition operating systems to provide virtualization, one can truly see the sponge that soaks up the market share.
Posted by: Mike | Jul 3, 2009 5:29:43 PM
