Sun forced to use Intel chips because AMD Opteron too good

SUN MICROSYSTEMS now realises that it stands to lose market share not only from Intel on Linux based servers but could face severe competition from AMD with its Opteron, a research analyst claimed today.

And that means it will have to carry on buying Intel Xeon chips, although the taste of that must cause a bitter taste in its corporate mouth.

Matthew Wilkins, a senior analyst with iSuppli, said that Sun now knows not everyone buying Intel X86 boxes want to run Windows on them, and that's why it introduced its low end servers earlier this year.

That, claims Wilkins, is a sea change for Sun's server strategy which rotated around the Solaris operating system and the UltraSPARC chip family.

But, continued Wilkins, Sun should be applauded for "having the guts" to make that tough realisation.

Yet, he said in the note to iSuppli customers, there's an irony that possibly has escaped Sun Microsystems.

He thinks it's unlikely Sun will ever adopt AMD's Opteron because its 64-bit UltraSPARC chips/servers could well suffer from odious comparisons with the upstart's microprocessor.

He claimed that if Sun offered both Opteron and SPARCy servers side by side, Scott McNealy's customers might wonder about the cost/performance of the one against the other, with AMD's chip performing all too well, in such a case.

And that will force it to carry on using its old enemy Intel's microprocessors rather than its possible friend AMD, Wilkins reckons. µ

L'INQ
iSuppli