doesn’t fundamentally change UltraSparc and Sun’s positioning in any way. It’s the type of incremental upgrade that computer makers sort of have to deliver.

Intel has shown preliminary benchmarks that backup their general statements about performance. Based on what I have seen, there is not reason to think the products will not live up to their billing.

Dell has had a really good run selling essentially cookie-cutter rack-mount servers. But the era of solving problems by just buying more boxes is coming to a close.

AMD has made some gains in mobile technology, but has been only marginally successful. There is a higher level of integration with notebooks than with desktop PCs, which gives Intel an edge since they are...

Intel let a competitor sneak into a market where they weren’t before. Still, it was hard to believe that AMD would be able to maintain the kind of performance lead that they have enjoyed over...

I’m not sure that SUSE departures [by themselves] mean much at this point.

Sun has given a speed boost to its installed base as the company focuses on x64 systems and the forthcoming Niagara processor,

Business desktops are a narrow, narrow margin business; they are almost a commodity. You have to be very efficient in order to make money selling desktops.

This isn’t even really an open-source issue, although it’s received a lot of publicity in that context.

This isn’t a new generation of servers aimed at grabbing a lot of new-to-Sun business. That’s what the Galaxy server it just announced is for. But this is a good upgrade.

Intel’s challenge is to drive adoption [beyond that] of Hewlett-Packard. To succeed beyond its niche, Intel needs to support a wide range of capabilities.

This announcement of yet another no-hassle SPARC system upgrade provides great asset protection to Sun’s huge base of applications and customers.

At some level, this [reorganization] is clearly a response to Google because of Microsoft’s historic orientation around the fat client and traditional operating system and applications,

People do not typically leave companies if they are deliriously happy with their roles, but sometimes even people who are reasonably content with their jobs find better opportunities that come along.

Software patents are a mess, … Even if you don’t believe in abolishing them entirely, there have been far too many examples of patents being granted even in light of overwhelming evidence of prior art...

Over time, the performance-per-watt [equation] is becoming increasingly important. Its power is relative to performance as opposed to raw power or lowest power consumption.

They woke up the sleeping lion. If I were AMD, I’d be looking at where Intel is going and be more than a little concerned. Intel is well on its way to bridging its major...

They are all comparable in performance for high-end, non-X86 architectures.

It’s hard to see the Itanium Solutions Alliance accomplishing anything major that the billions already spent by HP, Intel, and the rest haven’t. You don’t see an x86 Solutions Alliance.

Those do not appear to be cherry-picked numbers of some particular benchmark on a blue moon with a tailwind blowing.

Particularly with this kind of niche, this isn’t really so much about the box, it’s about channels and go-to-market. It’s about setting up distribution and supply partners more than it is about the right box.

Intel woke up from its frequency delusion and is now going full-bore on dual-core.

The problem is, to be at that nirvana, Apple would have to have the ISVs increase their investment on Apple hardware, at least in the transition. That is very difficult for Apple.

Michael Dell likes to periodically send messages to Intel that Dell does have the option of introducing AMD.

I don’t think anybody knows exactly what the end result of open sourcing the chip technology is.

You have to do a lot of running just to stay in place in this business.

When the Pentium 4 first came out, the performance was very disappointing to a lot of people initially. It’s hard to call the Pentium 4 a failure, given how many they sold, but it was...

If developers don’t make the transition to Apple and Intel, they’ll probably be making the transition to Windows and Intel. Intel doesn’t have a lot to lose.

This is about reducing administrative costs more than about security.

Intel has inconsistently put energy into storage. It hasn’t had a real comprehensive strategy in the past.

[The new chipset] should help them maintain a leadership position in mobile processor technology.

[Despite the promised performance improvements, the new processor] doesn’t fundamentally change UltraSparc and Sun’s positioning in any way, … It’s the type of incremental upgrade that computer makers sort of have to deliver.

I don’t think Microsoft had much choice in the matter. The bottom line is there is not a whole lot of market to buy that product from Microsoft.

Dell has had a very focused strategy: Don’t spend a lot on research and development, leverage the work of others, and deliver cookie-cutter servers and desktops cheaply. That lined up well with the market when...

It’s still not clear how visible that will be. I don’t think it will be pervasive in 2006.

Microsoft has built its business on working with third party software vendors and wants to leverage that expertise to the supercomputing arena.

In 2004 and 2005 we saw new technologies and approaches enter the [server] market as spending and growth began to resume. In 2006, we shouldn’t expect to see so many brand-new things, but rather the...

Sun has to keep up with the other guys. IBM is going to be coming out with the Power5+ soon. The reality is in this industry you have to put a lot of energy into...

Certainly, the fact that you need to be using brand new hardware is a selling disadvantage out the door.

The fact that Itanium didn’t take off as expected is really because it is only in certain types of applications [such as databases] that there was a driving need to go beyond 32-bit to the...

History says that binary translation basically doesn’t work. The day may come when someone can do a good enough job with it, but that concept has been thrown out there many times in the computer...

Enterprises must either adopt multi core or stick with slower chips.

Basically, no one ever used hardware-based IA-32 execution, so better to use the silicon for something else. Of course, basically no one uses software-based emulation either, but at least that doesn’t cost chip real estate.

It is a question of the devil you know.

I see this as fine-tuning more than changing direction. Obviously, they’re struggling financially, but in general this is a small number of people in the scope of things at Sun.

Obviously, they have to sell lots of systems of this size to pay back what has to be a considerably larger R&D investment than they have even with Galaxy.

This is a bigger story for Apple than for Intel. Apple liked Intel’s roadmap better than that of Power PC, and the idea is that they will now sell a higher percentage of notebook computers.

The potential here is a lot more efficient use of hardware, better centralized management, and potentially more flexibility with users in that they’re not tied to a particular desktop device. I don’t believe there’s a...

Microsoft has made a few unsuccessful attempts to become a key player in the supercomputer market but the company could be in a better position for success this time.

Obviously, [Virtual Iron] is a startup in a space where a lot of people are playing. I’m not about to predict that they’re going to take the market by storm. On the other hand, they...