Re: Scaling noise

Martin J. Bligh
2003-09-03T18:43:48Z

>> Back to the original off-topic...
>> An OEM can spin their motivation to focus on smaller systems in 3 ways:
>>
>> 1. large server sales are a small % of industry units
>> 2. large server sales are a small % of industry revenue
>> 3. large server sales are a small % of industry profits
>>
>> Only 1 is true.
>
> How about some data to back up that statement?
>
> Sun: ~11B/year and losing money, heavily server based
> Dell: ~38B/year and making money, 99% small box based
>
> If you were gambling with _your_ money, would you invest in Sun or Dell?

Errm, IBM is gambling with _their_ money, as are others such as HP,
and they're making big iron.

So do you believe they're all just completely stupid, and unable to read
their own sales figures? Or is it just a vast conspiracy to promote large
SMP / NUMA boxes because of ... something?

Sun is not loosing money because they're "server based". It's because
they're locked into Solaris and SPARC, and customers by and large
don't want that. Their machines are probably rather overpriced vs using
ia32 hardware as well. Your 1 dimensional extension of logic is ...
unimpressive.

M.