Why Fujitsu's SPARC is better than Sun's

In your article Fujitsu 128 CPU mainframe better than Sun's , you said you wondered why Fujitsu's SPARC64 V implementation of the SPARC design is better than Sun's own.

The reason is that Fujitsu has focused on execution performance over bandwidth, which is the opposite of Sun's approach. Also, Fujitsu's SPARC64 has had out-of-order execution since the first version and their SPARC64 V design includes significantly enhanced out-of-order execution capabilities at the expense of load latency. It was load (memory) latency which Sun was so concerned about that caused them to not add out-of-order execution. However, it appears that Fujitsu has made the better choice of execution performance over bandwidth and, specifically, out-of-order over load latency. This is not to say that there aren't other features of Fujitsu's design that best the decisions made at Sun. The impressive thing is that Fujitsu has added, at the minimum, parity, and, in many cases, error checking and correction (ECC) to the internal buses to compete with mainframes and they are still in the top of the pack of 64-bit CPUs in the SPEC benchmarks, whereas Sun is languishing in the doldrums.

I think of this schism as akin to Xerox versus Apple in GUI's. One company invented the concept, but another made a better implementation. The difference there is that Xerox didn't bother to compete with Apple. Or, closer to the issue, it's very much like AMD beating Intel with the Athlon versus the Pentium II/III and the Athlon 64 versus the Pentium 4. There the ultimate cause was excellent engineering talent, in the form of ex-Alpha engineers, joining AMD. Apparently a similar level of talent arrived at Fujitsu for the SPARC 64 design team.

For more info on both Sun's and Fujitsu's SPARC CPUs (and great info about most others):, go here.

Cheers
Jerri

Bill Gates, The Rogister, The INQUIRER in the money

I just hit the Register for the first time in forever, on a link from Groklaw to describe the Real Player demo on embedded Windoze. The first line in the Rogerstir story had the Microsoft fine at "497 million euros, or over $800 million". I hope arithmetic is not the Rogister's strong suit!

Eureka, Magee. Such a deal you can offer. Send Billygates Gruff an E-mail, refer to the Rogister "over $800 million" figure, and offer to pay the Microsoft 497 million euro fine if Bill will send you a mere $750 million.

:)

John

BT and Yahoo

Just an addition to the letter about BT Yahoo jerking the customer around.

The call center he was speaking to in Edmonton is the same one I work at (although I'm a Comcrap (cast) agent). BT Yahoo has outsourced their tier 2 support (which is at this center) to Convergys. Convergys is notorious for..well.....providing shitty customer service (I assume you may post this....if you do, can I say shitty?). The night shift is composed of three different people, none of which are named Brian. My Fiance, who also works there, says there is no Brian in the entire department.

It's always nice to know when it's an outsourced liar jerking you around, and not the company itself.

Name supplied

BT and Yahoo

Just read with interest the article about the guy having no email since the 12th March.

My story is pretty similar. My email account broke on 15th March, all email sent to my address was being bounced back with a 'this user does not have a btinternet.com account' error. Interestingly enough I could still send email but only for a couple of days, then I couldn't even log in to my email account. I called BT 3 times, speaking to 3 different people who all didn't have a clue what I was going on about but they did all agree it was 'strange'. Only my third call I got put though to a yahoo support guy in Canada who also didn't seem to have much of a clue either but told me my call would be escalated (I'm sure the second guy told me this) and that I would be called back on Monday (22nd) at 8am ?!? in the morning. Amazingly I was ... however only to be told (again) that my call would be escalated and he couldn't say what was wrong or when it would be fixed.

My email did start working Monday night (hopefully it still is) however the story does not end there as now not only is my email working but I'm also receiving someone else's! I feel another call to 'support' coming on ... then again maybe I should just keep quiet in case they end up braking my account again !

BT are obviously having some major problems and don't seem to want to talk about it ..

Ian C

Google and Mike Magee

Hi:

You might be interested to find that, if you do a Google search on just 'Mike Magee' you'll get a couple of pages which seem to claim that he:

Runs a tattoo parlor in Thunder Bay Ontario, recently had a hernia operation, and (shock) sleeps with Dr. Tom Pabst.

True or Stranger than Truth? We think we should be told.

Dave M.

Cops, FreeCell and the Like

Adam,

Re the NY Cops playing free cell: That's nothing. I happen to be a bench tech at one of the USA's larger suppliers of mobile computers, and I can tell you that most of the machines I get have a lot more than free cell or solitaire.

I have personally witnessed computers come back from the field dripping with porn and such, IE history records of cops patronizing BDSM and snuff websites, 100s of MB's of downloaded songs from Kazaa and Limewire, and more. The best was dealing with a small time department in Texas that sent their machines in - the entire computer was basically just a rolling entertainment center, complete with DVD player, added sound amps, outboard speakers, and .mp3's of such groovy songs as the Bat-man theme and The Man From Uncle. I cant imagine the mental imagery of them playing these songs while chasing down speeders. :D

The only good news is that I haven't seen any kiddie porn yet. These same cops also just love to bash in the touch-screens of their computers when they break or dont operate properly for whatever reason. I've repaired no less than 40 units over 3 years that were the clear victim of a officer's baton or fist.

Such things have led me to believe that there's not as much difference between the cops and robbers as they would like you to believe.

TW