November 18, 2002 (IDG News Service) --
The world of computing is currently undergoing another in a series of decade-long phase changes, according to Sun Microsystems Inc. Chief Technology Officer Greg Papadopoulos. He says the new era of the "network-scaled computer" will see Sun bringing new approaches to users' cost-of-ownership problems and leveraging its investment in small, highly dense microprocessor technologies.
Working a whiteboard with a teacher's enthusiasm, Papadopoulos -- currently a part-time visiting professor at MIT as well as a Sun senior vice president -- recently sketched out for a group of journalists a historical perspective on the past four decades of computing. Papadopoulos consigns the "64-bit biggies" of current microprocessor architectures -- Intel Corp.'s Itanium, IBM's Power4 and even Sun's own SPARC -- to a legacy approach appropriate for the 1990s computing model of symmetrical-multiprocessing servers. Rather than these engines, he suggested, the wave of the future will be chips with multiple small, high-density microprocessors that offer higher throughput and are more I/O-centric.
Sun already has a stake in this new processing ground, with its July acquisition of San Jose-based Afara Websystems Inc., which had been working on SPARC-compatible chips focused on IP processing. Papadopoulos indicated that the fruits of the Afara work will in the future be found at the heart of the network-scaled computer model, with the 64-bit processors being built into servers and storage components. A major design goal of these processors will be minimal power consumption, or maximizing the MIPS per watt, he said.
Another technology arena Papadopoulos characterized as "a very interesting space" is ad hoc device networks. Here again, he said, Sun has invested in a start-up: ConnecTerra Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. ConnecTerra professes on its Web site to be engaged in creating the "Internet of devices," developing an architecture, standards and software products for IP telemetry and control. The company claims that its system will connect IT infrastructure to devices such as household appliances, electronic equipment, factory machines, gas pumps, office equipment, thermostats or any other device with electronic components.
Viewing the increasingly complex networked computing environment from an IT manager's perspective, Papadopoulos acknowledged the high cost of ownership confronting user companies and proposed that Sun will solve the problem with technology, not people. With as much as 80% of a typical IT budget being spent on people operating a company's IT infrastructure, vendors can offer users an array of solutions, he said. "You can go after this by going after services," Papadopoulos said, referring to IBM's acquisition of services firm PwC Consulting. Or a company can decide "I'm going to engineer that out," he said. Sun's focus will be on the latter and on technologies that advance data center automation, according to Papadopoulos.
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