I can't believe no one has commented... Genesi is placing themselves on the big stage... right in the middle of two big players in the Unix market... Right now IBM Rocks... and Sun is very steady... and looking to begin making some gains again. Very interesting times for Pegasos Users!!

Of course maybe it is just me...my Irix background makes me wish for the Unix wars of the early '90's... those were interesting times for big Iron makers... I don't think we will see that kind of playing field in Unix, now that Linux and BSD have thouroughly established themselves. But I do think that Sun and IBM are readying themselves for a knock-out/drag-out war on the Unix front... with HP sitting right behind them, waiting to pick up the pieces... I think Sun might have the key to controlling the low-end market with the "Niagara/T1" only time will tell.

Now if only Genesi can reap some of the benefits of Polaris... especially with a G5 Product in the works... they could become "Players"!!!!

Hi katos1, there is plenty more in the works...

Sara and the Solaris Factory

Have a look at the last page of the second article release by the Register this week and the comments we made that were included (here, scroll down). Here is the rest of the discussion with Ashlee:

Some other things to think about beyond the technology issues:

Sun and IBM are rivals, but they do cooperate.

IBM has focused on LINUX for POWER. It is true that IBM has adopted a more flexible policy toward Solaris on their x86 based servers, but not on POWER. That is the official IBM policy (internally the minds that be are changing). In the meanwhile, SUN wants to have Solaris everywhere and talking to the Sun Grid. Jonathan Schwartz understands that through Genesi he can achieve a "power" connection, which is why we have been involved/they have let us be involved and why we have supported this process for over a year and why hen has mentioned POWER in his blog.

The bigger story in terms of Sun is probably the fact that Sun is looking for new markets and finding them. Freescale is a powerhouse in the embedded market and Sun wants to see Solaris in netcom devices and in things like cars, Pachinko machines, ATMs, POS devices, etc. on the client side. That is where Freescale is. We happen to be a good partner for this too (again the Pegasos HAL/OF plays a major role):

http://www.genesippc.com/press.php?date=20051216

We are totally wired into Freescale. They are a Reseller of the ODW and we were featured in their CES Booth. Freescale does not quite have a strategic direction worked out post-IPO and Sun has probably honed in on this. Freescale's still does not understand that to grow their markets they have to support system development to sell their chips. Sun's Solaris can extend Freescale's potential and attract new communities of users. "Communities build volume and there are ways to monetize volume." Jonathan Schwartz said that.

http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2005/12/every-developer-needs-desktop.html

The even bigger strategic issue is one that Sun is attacking directly (examples: opening Solaris and opening up some of Java). IBM, as enormous as they are, moves ahead with inertia. We would not consider them "attacking" the matter like Sun as they are so big, so pervasive and so everywhere.

Here is the zillion dollar question: how to link to inexpensive client devices to your servers?

Sun has Java.
IBM has the ISA of POWER/PowerPC.

The "clients" could be mobile phones/mobile phone-computer combinations. They could be video game consoles. They could be...

What most miss in our opinion is that computing may be a utility, but computing systems never will be. Of course, Intel would have you believe otherwise and history has shown this to be the way, but things are changing. Given Intel's expense at CES, the ROI of their marketing was probably not that good. People are not fooled that Viiv is a play to make CE into the PC industry (with the same lousy margins for everyone but Intel). Sun had to go along to get along as the prospects for SPARC dwindled. IBM is the only company that can change the landscape. We think they will. That is what CELL is all about.

So to answer your questions...

AV: Er, so is my story totally bollocks then or is IBM's PowerPC architecture on the roadmap too?

bbrv: Your story is right on, but good things take time. Rome was not built in a day, etc.

AV: You're saying that you're looking at the G5 but is that for Solaris too?

bbrv: Of course! Solaris will be on the ODW and the "Open Server Workstation." We will see that it moves into CELL too.

AV: Could someone else build on this work and relatively easily make the leap to IBM's Power?

Without IBM that would be a challenge. Witness how long it took us. With Apple's departure from the ISA we are now the "Lone Ranger." :D The key is using the Open Firmware and the Pegasos HAL/OF speeds this up. Genesi will help commoditize the ISA on the client side with reliable and flexible hardware. We will do other stuff too, which is why this week we will release the complete PegasosPPC design through Power.org. The ODW is built on the Pegasos mainboard and removable, exchangeable, upgradeable PowerPC based CPU card.

In the end game, it will be about making it easier for what the customer does already and the client device will not be a commodity product - witness the iPod. More ideas on this are here:

http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2005/10/ipod-next.html


<snip>

Have a great day.

R&B

[ Edited by Genesi On 2006/1/15 17:38 ]