But Wait, There's More

UltraSparc-IV+, UltraSparc-IIIi+ Coming in Mid-2005

David Yen, who leads Sun Microsystems' Sparc chip development efforts, was visiting New York this week and took us out to breakfast so he could clear up some confusion about when the "Panther" UltraSparc-IV+ chips will appear in Sun Fire servers.

A few weeks ago, just as Yen's team was raising the curtain on the Panther chips, other Sun executives gave us the impression that we should expect a kicker to the current "Jaguar" UltraSparc-IV processors in 2005 and then the Panthers running at 1.8 GHz or so sometime after that, maybe as much as nine months later. (Other publications reported the same information.) This is not the case, says Yen. In fact, he expects that Sun will roll out the Panther chips around mid-2005 and that it will take a few months for them to roll up and down the product line. Yen also says that Sun may ship slower versions of the chips, perhaps running at 1.6 GHz or so, depending on how yields turn out.

Yen also said that the company would be shipping faster versions of its single-core UltraSparc-IIIi processors, tentatively called the UltraSparc-IIIi+ chips, while boosting the on-chip cache from 1 MB to 4 MB, as it moves from 130 nanometer to 90 nanometer processes. The UltraSparc-IIIi chips are used in entry Sparc servers and currently top out at 1.6 GHz. Yen did not say how high Sun could crank the clocks on the UltraSparc-IIIi as Texas Instruments (Sun's sole chip fab) moves to that 90 nanometer process. Above 2 GHz is a good guess.

HP Says Itanium Ecosystem Is Still Expanding

As the main proponent of the Itanium 2 processor for server platforms, Hewlett-Packard has borne the brunt of criticism from rivals about that processor. One of the primary metrics that everyone keeps watching is how big the Itanium application ecosystem is. Don Jenkins, vice president of marketing for HP's Business Critical Systems unit, which is responsible for the HP Integrity, AlphaServer, and NonStop server lines, says that there were 2,700 applications available for the Itanium servers by the end of this summer, about 200 more than the goal that HP and Intel had set for Itanium earlier in the year.

Jenkins also is quite happy with the acceptance of the Itanium-based Integrity line. In the most recent quarter, ending July 31, about 25 percent of server shipments sold by the BCS unit were for Itanium-based systems, and the company expects to hit the halfway mark for BCS shipments sometime in 2005. Our guess is around the middle of the year.

Microsoft Stuns Competitors by Licensing Dual-Core Chips As One Chip

This newsletter's lead story a few week's ago, "Rotten to the Core: Chips, Lies, and Software Licenses," discussed how software licensing practices were being warped by the advent of multicore or multithreaded processors. The essay concluded by saying that although Sun Microsystems, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices were all trying to convince software vendors to price their software based on CPU socket counts, instead of processor core counts, their arguments had been met with much mocking and laughter.

That is, until Microsoft weighed in on the issue, last week.

Microsoft, always seeking an advantage, announced that it will treat dual-core chips as if they are only one processor with regard to operating system and middleware software pricing. This will certainly make IBM, Oracle, and other software giants think twice, but just because Microsoft is going to effectively cut its software prices in half on dual-core processors (and presumably by a factor of four on quad-core chips) does not necessarily mean the industry will follow suit. That said, the fact that Microsoft has broken ranks makes Intel and Sun look a lot less ridiculous--but only in hindsight.

Europe Clears Oracle's Acquisition of PeopleSoft

The European Commission's antitrust authority, headed by Mario Monti, who will soon be stepping down as antitrust chief, announced this week that it will not impede the $7.7 billion hostile takeover of PeopleSoft by ERP rival and database powerhouse Oracle. Under Monti, the EU has been aggressive about blocking big mergers, but says that after looking at hundreds of software deals, it has come to the conclusion that the merger of PeopleSoft and Oracle would not radically change software pricing practices in the European Union.

With this move, both the U.S. and European antitrust bodies have given Oracle the green light. But the legal fight goes on. Oracle and PeopleSoft have been fighting each other in Delaware Chancery Court, where Oracle is trying to reverse some of the defensive financial moves (often called a poison pill) that make the acquisition more expensive than it might otherwise be. That court has not said when it would make a ruling, so the show goes on.

SGI's Sales Are Down, but Losses Shrink, Too

Unix and Linux server vendor SGI reported financial results for its fiscal first quarter, ending September 24. Sales in the first quarter were $174.6 million, down 14 percent. Product sales (predominantly servers and storage but also some Unix workstations) were $97.2 million, down 18 percent, while services revenues were $77.4 million, down 8 percent. By cost cutting across the board (R&D, SG&A, and so forth), SGI was able to reduce its operating loss to $26.6 million in the quarter, compared with an operating loss of $44.4 million this time last year. The company posted a net loss of just under $28 million, which worked out to $0.11 a share.

New Site to Spin SCO's Unix IP Legal Issues

The SCO Group is unhappy about the rough treatment it often receives from the Groklaw Web site, which was founded by Pamela Jones, a journalist with a paralegal background, to track SCO's lawsuit against IBM and all of the legal issues that have spawned from it. Groklaw is a popular and funny site, and it accurately reflects many of the opinions held in the Unix and Linux communities.

Now SCO is launching a site to give its own side of the intellectual property and legal issues and to give its supporters a place where they can talk and vent. It also means that SCO doesn't feel compelled to engage with the readers of Groklaw or Pamela Jones, who has tried repeatedly to get SCO to answer questions and respond to queries that she and her readers have about SCO's various lawsuits over Unix intellectual property. The SCO site, www.prosco.net, is expected to go live next week.

Sun Java Creator Tool Ported to Solaris X86

Sun Microsystems has announced that its Java Studio Creator application development tool has been ported to Solaris 9 for X86 platforms and for the Apple Mac OS X operating system. Java Studio Creator has always been available for Sparc/Solaris platforms, and if Sun wants companies to embrace Solaris for X86, it has to make its tools available there, too. Making the jump from Sparc/Solaris to Power/OS X is somewhat simplified by the fact that both Solaris and Mac OS X are based heavily on the BSD variant of Unix. Customers who already have Java Studio Creator get the update for free. The software comes with a one-year subscription to the Sun Developer Network, which costs $99 a year.