Sun Readying Launch of 'Galaxy' Next-Gen Opteron Hardware

The project, code-named Galaxy, will produce fully industry-standard, Sun-designed and fabricated servers on forthcoming dual-core Opteron technology from AMD, which the chip vendor is getting set to launch, said sources familiar with both company's plans. Like Sun's current line of Opteron-based servers, the new hardware will run various flavors of Linux, as well as Solaris or Windows.

AMD's dual-core processors double the performance of each server processor, in essence allowing an eight-way box to act as a 16-processor server, a four-way server to perform as an eight-processor box, and so on.

While Sun initially will launch an eight-way Galaxy server -- the vendor's first eight-way Opteron server -- Sun also is readying one-, two- and four-way Galaxy boxes, according to sources. Eventually, the Galaxy servers will replace the current line of Sun rack-optimized Opteron boxes, the Sun Fire v20z and v40z servers.

Sun also will leverage the Galaxy server designs for its next-generation blade servers, sources said. Last month Sun discontinued its current line of Sun Fire B100 and B200 blade servers in favor of a next-generation line currently in production, said Graham Lovell, a senior director in Sun's Network Systems Group. Sun will stop taking orders for the current blade family at the end of March, he said.

A spokeswoman from Sun, Santa Clara, Calif., said the vendor does not comment on unannounced products. However, Sun executives have already stated plans to launch an eight-way server based on AMD Opteron processors sometime in 2005.

Sun, which has traditionally depended on hardware sales to drive its revenue, has undergone a makeover in the past several years to reposition itself as a company providing business solutions comprised of hardware, software and services. But Sun has struggled to convince the market of its new role, and has seen revenue fall off sharply and its stock price languish in the $3 to $5 range for the last 2 12 years.

In the past year alone, Sun also has drastically revamped its OS and server strategy to stymie the loss of revenue to competitors IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, all of which began selling commodity servers running Linux long before Sun got on the bus. Last year, Sun cozied up to AMD as its primary chip partner, and officially discontinued its Intel-based server line last month in favor of exclusively selling AMD- and Sparc-based systems. Some familiar with the company's plans said Sun may eventually phase out its proprietary Sparc servers in favor of an entire AMD-based line, though Sun executives have never officially stated this intent.

Sun's move to providing more industry-standard server technology, as well as plans to open-source its traditionally proprietary Solaris OS sometime this year, show the vendor is returning to the original strategy of building products on standards-based technology -- the one that made Sun a hardware powerhouse in the first place, solution providers said.

"It's back to the future," said one VAR familiar with Sun's plans. The solution provider, who asked not to be named, said the fact that Bechtolsheim is behind Sun's new standards-based server strategy is a boon for the vendor. and will give customers it may have lost to competitors an extremely compelling reason to return to buying Sun boxes in favor of Dell, HP or IBM.

"Here you have Andy Bechtolsheim creating industry-standard boxes that run any OS and have a kick ass-architecture, [as well as] are higher performance and [provide] lower cost of acquisition," said the VAR. "And with Andy doing his magic, you'll have boxes that architecturally are probably a lot more intelligent than most of the other volume boxes out there. How can people buying x86 not only take a hard look at Sun's Opteron systems, but take a hard look at Opteron running Solaris?"