Ultra Sparc machine

[Sust]

I was looking at this Ultra Sparc machine in my office and someone said that it cost $50k three years ago.
I'm just a computer peon and dont know too much about the super high end computers that mega corporations put together to run their databases and stuff.
However, I do want to know exactly what this machine does that makes it cost $50k.
I read an article on aceshardware and in between the tech jargon, I picked up the fact that it's very reliable with less than 1% failure chances and the ability to troubleshoot hardware problems easier.
It danced around the performance issue somewhat because its price made it somewhat exclusive and it's hard to compare the two because there aren't that many benchmarks that athlon/p4 and Ultrasparc share.
I tried to run the web surfing program on Solaris and it was quite slow.
I'm at a loss in figuring out how this POS Gateway Pentium 200 can fire up a web browser faster than the $50k Ultrasparc.
Is this one of the inherent problems with the Ultrasparc?
Oh wait... my original question... Why is an Ultrasparc worth $50k?
I can understand those multi-billion dollar companies losing millions if a server crashes and dies...
But why choose ultrasparc for a workstation?

 

[Demon-Xanth]

The reason why the webbrowser loads up fast on a Windows system is that because of the integration, it's virtually always running. If you're only going to use a Sparc for office apps, you're not even coming close to what it is capable of. The Sparc architecture is a true 64 bit CPU for one thing, AMD and Intel are still working on a 64bit CPU. (why not just jump to 128 I don't know). They can access more than 4GB of RAM w/o the programming tricks required by x86. And on the IPC front they are extremely fast. They have SCSI,66Mhz 64bit PCI is common, basically everything that makes a PC expensive, they have, and then some.

And the way MS ported IE to other OS'es is a joke

 

[jhu]

you sure it was $50k? they've a quad processor workstations (sun ultra 80) for $17k now

 

[Shalmanese]

Its got a cool name!

Basically, it does some things very very fast and a lot of things reasonably slow.

 

[Sust]

Whoops, I stand corrected. My supervisor said that it cost somewhere between $15k and $20k. My mistake.
Still a rather hefty price, but apparently it's worth it because theyre still selling like hot cakes.
Exactly what kind of operations or programs can it run that make it that much faster and command that much more of a premium?

I'll use seti@home for an example. It usually takes my PC roughly a day or so to churn out a fully processed unit. Where would the Ultrasparc land in this area? Would it spit back 2 fully processed units in the same amount of time? or more? or less?

The main reason I ask is because I need to look into workstations for the upcoming budget meeting. After seeing the Ultra Sparc, I wanted to know what its capabilities were in terms of data analysis performance. I forsee needing computers that can crunch numbers together in a relatively quick fashion and want to see whether the Ultra Sparc performance gains are going to be worth the price tradeoff.

 

[Searching]

Sounds like you aren't the right person to be doing such an analysis

 

[spidey07]

Biggest advantage is a true 64 bit processor/OS. Run this on the sparc processors which are CISC running at insane clock speed like 450 MHz (don't know much about the new sparc3 procs at 750) and we're talking serious crunch power. All hardware is very integrated and has excellent diagnostic functions. Walk into any transaction heavy business and you'll see a butt load of purple.

Yes, Suns are way overpriced. But when you get into their midrange gear you get what you pay for. We just bought a sunfire 6800 - 16 procs, 64 GB ram.

 

[Sunner]

One big advantage of Sun boxes is the tight integration between the hardware and the software, thst is unless you load it with Linux or Net/Open BSD.

One very nice thing about Sun workstations(and I suppose, other UNIX workstations too, but I've only worked on Sun's) is that no matter how hard you push them in terms of workload, they'll never crash or go unresponsive, they just chug along, day after day, pretty much until you turn them off yourself.

Of course for an office computer, a Sun box isn't exactly ideal.

Oh and they have been selling their 2-wat Blade 1000 boxes for a while, you can get one for around $11k or so.

 

[ScottMac]

I ran Seti on one of our Lab Ultra 30s (/Solaris 2.7). My recollection was that it did three or four WU a day (in addition to it's regular load - light to medium file file service). I only ran one instance, and it was compiled for Solaris 2.5 or 2.6.

Suns are pretty wunnerful, they run hard and are pretty relaible...but when they die...they die ugly....and never cheap. Get the service contract......


FWIW

Scott

 

[Locutus4657]

Because passing around large pointers can impact preformace for applications which tend too throw them around alot but not nessisarly actually move data (lots of programs like that). As a matter of fact there is discussion as too whether making a true 64bit OS for these new chips is really the best way to go in one of the more technical news groups I read.



<< The reason why the webbrowser loads up fast on a Windows system is that because of the integration, it's virtually always running. If you're only going to use a Sparc for office apps, you're not even coming close to what it is capable of. The Sparc architecture is a true 64 bit CPU for one thing, AMD and Intel are still working on a 64bit CPU. (why not just jump to 128 I don't know). They can access more than 4GB of RAM w/o the programming tricks required by x86. And on the IPC front they are extremely fast. They have SCSI,66Mhz 64bit PCI is common, basically everything that makes a PC expensive, they have, and then some.

And the way MS ported IE to other OS'es is a joke >>

 

[Sust]

*sob*
It's true, I'm horribly underqualified to figure out this problem!
That's mostly why I'm asking questions though.
It sounds like the Ultra Sparc would kick ass in crunching numbers together whenever we're trying to process our data with statistical programs.
I only hope that they make a version for Solaris... but that's not something that can be helped.

I'll run your words by the head honchos and see where theyre willing to go with all this and how much theyre willing to shell out.
Though it sounds like theyre looking for quantity over quality so I might have to "settle" for a dual athlon/Xeon setup, but there's no guarantee that will be the best idea either because I dont know if the programs we run are supportive of a dual processor environment.
Might even wind up having a bunch of single processor computers lying around all over the office.

Thanks for all the answers, guys.

 

[Turkey]

The only advantage a 64 bit processors over a 32 bit processor is that it has higher precision and can address memory > 4GB more easily. Differences between a 64 bit Sun and 32 bit Intel/AMD are probably much more complicated . I don't know the details of the UltraSparc processor, but it's probably designed for database/engineering workstation applications, which basically means that it has a really good floating point unit and large on-die cache. So you're probably not paying for the processor... more likely you are paying for the reliability, memory subsystem, and i/o subsystem, which is probably much less of a bottleneck than in x86 land.

 

[supernova87a]

When debating what hardware to go with, I've always been told that for unspecialized users, a PC running linux is equivalent to a sun blade or similar, but lop off a zero from the price -- and this includes later upgrades like hard drives, monitors, etc. After all, you'll know what system you need if you're one of those top-end number crunching users, and if you're not, you'll save tons of money and have a more user-serviceable machine.

But many of our systems (in astronomy) are heavily Sun machines, still. I think they'll start getting smarter with their purchases, though. (i hope) A lot of the distributed computing being looked at now is based on linux pcs. I wonder why Silicon Graphics has almost no presence here? (ie. versus Sun, in my field) Anyone know?

 

[poopaskoopa]

We have Ultra 10s in our labs. I don't think they're all that though. MATLAB/SPICE sims seem to run a lot faster on fast x86 machines(I realize that MATLAB sims were run using a C compiler and all, but...). You can use use SUN workstations to develop apps for the SUN servers, so you could grab a Blade 100 for $1k plus monitor and start there. I guess that would be a reason why you want a SUN workstation. Oh, that reminds me that these workstations can handle horribly programmed C++ apps(like mine in my CSC days) better than Wintel box ever could. That's an OS(and programming, ya I know) issue though. I think Ultra10s cost 3k and up, and I think U60s cost about 7k and up, so I think your figure of $50k is kinda high and outdated.

 

[Sunner]

Most if not all stuff will run faster on a modern x86 box than it will on an Ultra 10.

The U10 is really just a tower version of the Ultra5, and they generally come with UltraSPARC II's at 270 or 360 MHz.

An AthlonXP at 1.5 GHz will be faster in just about any task.