The Opteron Option

Computerworld - Quick: Who was Employee No. 1 at Sun Microsystems -- Scott McNealy or Bill Joy? OK, it's a trick question. The answer is neither one. Unless you're really into this stuff, you've probably never even heard of the individual who holds that distinction.
His name is Andy Bechtolsheim. Like McNealy and Joy, he was one of Sun's co-founders, but he's kept a low profile over the years. Bechtolsheim left Sun in 1995 to form a networking start-up called Granite Systems that was acquired in 1996 by Cisco. He returned to Sun in February 2004 by way of Sun's acquisition of Kealia, a server design company he co-founded.
What's interesting about all this is that since his return to Sun, Bechtolsheim has been shepherding a hush-hush project, code-named Galaxy, to develop a next generation of servers. What I find particularly eyebrow-raising is that this entire line will be devoid of Sun's Sparc microprocessor technology. It will be based entirely on Opteron microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices.
Of course, Sun is already a poster child for AMD, having released its first Opteron-based systems last year. But Galaxy promises to dramatically advance Sun's commitment to AMD; Sun's chief cheerleader for the Opteron is none other than Bechtolsheim. It makes you wonder how long Sun will maintain its enthusiasm for keeping Sparc alive.
The momentum behind AMD's Opteron technology is pretty remarkable. Sun's interest aside, IBM is all over it, and now even Hewlett-Packard, the company that jointly developed Itanium, has joined the Opteron fold.
I recently spoke with Ann Livermore, executive VP of the technology solutions group at HP, about what must have been two tough decisions: to pull out of that 10-year Itanium co-development pact with Intel, and to suck it up and offer the Opteron-based systems that customers wanted. Livermore's position was characteristically straightforward and down to earth: Citing "some great price/performance" with AMD's technology, she basically said HP needed to give customers what they want.
She also made the point that having more than one chip supplier is simply a good business practice. "We always have to have the most competitive price/performance points in our road maps," Livermore said. "And having two providers allows us to be able to do that."
Seems reasonable enough. Which is why Dell's Intel-only strategy seems shortsighted. I was struck by IDG News Service correspondent Tom Krazit's story in last week's issue, in which he reported that while HP, IBM and Sun all plan to use AMD's new dual-core Opteron chips, Dell remains an AMD