

Sun melting down, and where's Java? - kenver
http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/1595

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ashleytowers
Sun's fate was always a concern before Java was GPL'd, but it is an entity in
its own right now. So, whilst Sun is the lead cheerleader, should they fail
there are enough big companies (IBM for one) heavily invested in Java that one
of them would take over the reigns.

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snorkel
Sun should focus on producing Java acceleration hardware, especially making
multicore behemoth servers designed for Java thread concurrency. Sun already
has enterprise customers, they own Java, and Java is their customers platform
of choice.

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jwilliams
Sun already has multicore behemoths - it's the CoolThreads platform
(UltraSparc T1 and T2 processors). Dozens of cores - and I've used them and
they run concurrent Java really, really well.

As for specialised hardware. Sun used to produce/specify the picoJava,
microJava and ultraJava processor architectures (processors designed for
Java).... They all tanked. The problem wasn't the implementation - it was
timing. They came about just when the processor world was coming to the
conclusion that the instruction set architecture didn't matter - AMD proved
this by bolting x86 onto a RISC core (proved it by doing this, and then by
winning the performance war for a number of years with it).

Problem now for Sun is timing again - the market combined with their market
share. It will be a challenge to hold onto the market they've got, and a
bigger challenge to grow into other areas.

~~~
snorkel
By "multicore behemoths" I mean hundreds of processing cores like the Java
compute appliances Azul Systems sells.

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strlen
I wonder if "it's open source, this will go on irrespective of corporate
situation" is a powerful retention/new acquisition argument for Sun (for Java
and OpenSolaris) -- and could ultimately what keeps them alive amidst fears.

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larryfreeman
I had a feeling this would happen as soon as Sun changed its stock ticker
symbol to JAVA.

