"I am confident that the future of the SPARC/Solaris is better and brighter than it has ever been in its already extraordinary 17 year history."
--David Yen
Executive Vice President
Throughput Systems Group
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Open Letter
An Open Letter from David Yen, Executive Vice President
Scalable Systems Group, Sun Microsystems
Tuesday, April 26, 11:00 AM EST
Over the past week or so, some articles have been published carrying the news that Sun has discontinued its SPARC® development projects code named "Gemini" and "Millennium." A number of analysts and industry insiders have praised this decision, correctly interpreting it as a commitment by Sun to bring our next-generation Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology processors and systems to market as quickly as possible. However, some writers and a few competitors have suggested that these actions signal Sun's decision to reduce its commitment to SPARC.
I want to use this first opportunity to address you as the Executive Vice President of the newly-created Throughput Systems Group, that we are unwavering in our commitment to the SPARC/SolarisTM platform. SPARC and Solaris continue to be our foundation for delivering premier solutions for secure, reliable, and powerful enterprise computing. We made the decision to discontinue the Gemini and Millennium projects in order to better focus our SPARC development efforts, and to hasten the date at which we can deliver far more powerful SPARC/Solaris platforms based on new Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology.
What do our recent decisions mean for our road map, both in the short-term and the long-term? What do they mean for our customers?
In the near-term, we have a very strong stream of UltraSPARC® IV and UltraSPARC IIIi upgrade projects scheduled for delivery over the next several years. These new processors will keep our SPARC-based systems highly competitive, and will provide our customers with a continuous stream of performance enhancement opportunities. Our latest generation of Sun FireTM hardware, introduced in February and based on the UltraSPARC IV processor, has already set new marks for OLTP and database applications. As a result of successes like these, SPARC today is by far the highest volume 64-bit processor shipping for enterprise servers worldwide.
In the longer-term, we will focus our substantial development resources on Niagara and Rock processor families. Both of these SPARC designs are based on powerful CMT principles, and fully support our revolutionary SPARC/Solaris Throughput Computing initiative. The Niagara and Rock processors are already well along in development, and our intensified focus will enable us to get them to market as quickly as possible. These network and data facing processors are expected to deliver an order of magnitude gain in throughput performance. We will deliver these powerful new generations of CMT-based SPARC processors while continuing to protect our customers' investment in software by maintaining binary compatibility.
In closing, I am confident that the future of the SPARC/Solaris is better and brighter than it has ever been in its already extraordinary 17 year history.
David Yen
Executive Vice President
Throughput Systems Group
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