Sun stresses multiprocessor versions of new Sparcstation line

Electronic News, May 25, 1992 by Craig Stedman

BOSTON--Sun Microsystems Inc. is putting heavy emphasis on the multiprocessing versions of its new Sparcsation 10 line and hopes they can account for up to one-fifth of its 1993 workstation sales, although rival vendors are trying to portray Sun's strategy mainly as proof that the Sparc architecture can't compete on a uniprocesssor basis.

Companies like Hewlett-Packard and IBM see little short-term demand for multiprocessors workstation, since most applications are not currently written to operate in that mode and would need to be recompiled and in amny cases recorded in order to fully utilize such a machine.

Curt Wozniak, vice president of engineering for Sun's computer unit, insisted that any existing application would be able to "take advantage of MP to some extent" once the company's Solaris 2.0 operating system ships later this year. But he conceded tht better performance would evolve "over time as people learn more about" the technology.

Nonetheless, he said Sun expects between 10 and 20 percent of its over-all sales during 1993 to involve its new dual-CPU and quad machines. "I think you'll really see (desktop multiprocessing) be there" in such functional areas as multimedia, database and object-oriented programming.

As for the position of the other vendors, "We think they're wrong," Mr. Wozniak said. "We've pushed the uniprocessor performance as far as we could, and we're all about roughly equal to one another, and the next logical step is integrating MP into your environment."

However, Pierre Bouchard, product marketing manager for HP's RISC workstation line, viewed the emphasis on multiprocessing as an admission by Sun that it had essentially failed in its attempt to get the Sparc architecture back on the leading edge of the RISC performance curve.

"Its understandable why Sun is talking about multiprocessing, because they just don't have the uniprocessor performance it takes to compete," Mr. Bouchard said. "They didn't really have a choice, it seems to me."

HP plans to go the desktop multiprocessing route itself eventually, but sees no need to do so for now due to the software issue. "There just isn't any significant number of applications out there that can take advantage of multiprocessing in the workstation sapce," Mr. Bouchard said.

The Sparcstation 10 systems are rated by Sun for the better integer performance on a uniprocessor basis than HP or IBM models, but fall somewhat short on the floating point side. Mr. Bouchard seized on that as "evidence that they're having tough time" scaling Sparc, especially since HP's curren machines are already more than a year old.

Mr. Wozniak, though, said Sun excutives "are not embrassed at all" by the performance of the new Texas Instruments SuperSparcdevice. Sun has focused more creating low-cost, wellintegrated implementations of Sparc "rather than pure performance," he added.

Sun reiterated a long-standing theme that actual applications performance is the key measure of a machine, not CPU ratings. "Not many people sit in their offices and run Dhrystones and say 'Hey, see how fast we can go?'" noted president and chief executive Scott McNealy.

Meanwhile, Mr. Wozniak gave a rather lukewarm endorsement to the just-intorduced hyperSparc procesor from Cypress semiconductor. "We don't expect it to bemuch different from SuperSparc, but nonetheless it will be another highperformance implementation on the market, so we'll be glad to see it," he said.

He added that Sun "would need a compelling business reason" to use the Cypress device itself, holding out pricing as a potential example. "If their cost/performance turns out to be better, and people want it, we'll find a way to offer it," he said.