The journey continues... Shrenik's Blog

Ed Zander, Former CEO of Motorola, Former President of Sun Microsystems had an unscripted conversation with Larry Ellison, Founder & CEO of Oracle at the Churchill Club Event in San Jose.

Ed wanted to interview a person who had longevity in the industry, is relevant today, had great success over the years, faced challenges, changed rules of the game, is opinionated, controversial and wealthy. Larry Ellison was the perfect match

Larry founded Oracle in 1977 with an initial investment of $2000 ($1200 his own money and $800 from his two partners). At end of the trading day on Monday (Sep. 21, 2009) Oracle's market cap was $108.4Billion Over the last 32 years, he has remained focused on product development/engineering activities. What a legacy! Oracle database first ran on PDP-11 minicomputer.

Most of the financial messages from the talk are captured in the mercury news article

"T.J. Watson's company was the greatest company in the history of the enterprise," Ellison said. "We want to be T.J. Watson's IBM."

"We've already beaten IBM in software, now, if everyone will let us, we will beat IBM in hardware," Ellison said. "That is our goal."

According to Larry:

- Cloud is just water vapor. The new industry jargon. The technology has been around for more than a decade. It is network based computing with all the complexity in and behind the network. The end users need to just plug in their favorite desktop/laptop and/or mobile device. Watch a previously recorded outburst on cloud computing . After five years, Ed Zander would like to check with Larry Ellison on cloud computing.

- Mobile devices - would like to be the arms dealer who supplies technology to all the device manufacturers. Oracle/Sun's technology focus would be on the enterprise side.

- Supports Linux, but Solaris is more mature for enterprise applications.

- Most interested in the flash memory technology.

- Will not divest mySQL to gain approval from European Union. Believes that European Union will eventually approve the merger.

- Would like to keep Sun's technology - tape, storage, X64 based systems, SPARC, Solaris, Java, mySQL

- Microsoft is obsessed with Apple (Zune, OS), Google (Search) Sony (game console). Essentially focused on consumer space.

- IBM and SAP remain the two primary competitors.

- Dumbest product idea trying to run Oracle database on DOS and OS/2 operating systems.

- Advice to new entrepreneurs - start a business in biotech and/or other industries where innovation rate is the highest. The computer industry is in a consolidation phase similar to the auto/aviation industries

- Advice to future Ex-Chairman of Sun - Scott McNealy - focus on reducing the golf handicap.

A lively conversation, great to see two industry leaders with so much of energy.

[ T: OpenSPARC ] [ T: Sun ] [ T: Oracle ] [ T: cloud ] [ T: Java ]

The OpenSPARC team has released a new version T2 1.2

New features:

In the 1.0 release of the OpenSPARC T2, we had to remove two critical IO interface design files - PCI-express and 10G Ethernet - to comply with some of the legal restrictions. To provide OpenSPARC users alternative means to simulate the entire T2 system-on-chip (SoC) functionality, Sun has developed behavioral models for these two design blocks. These models have similar functionality as the original RTL but are written in the SystemC language. This release, for the first time, allows users to simulate OpenSPARC T2 design with all the IO interfaces of the chip including PCIe and 10G Ethernet. We have also augmented the verification environment, test bench, and test vectors so that users can verify the current design as well as any new variant of it.

Since OpenSPARC T2's PCI-express functionality only supports root-complex configuration, users would need to have access to Denali PureSpec PCI-express model to exercise this model.

Finally, the team added one missing piece (64-bit Vector.so library) that would allow OpenSPARC T2 simulation to run under 64-bit Linux operating system which was missing earlier. With this piece in place, T2 simulation can now be run both on 32b as well as 64b Linux platforms on x86 hardware.

Developers now have access a SystemC model of the PCI-Express (Root Complex) and a 10GigE verification environment.

Happy crunching!
[ T: OpenSPARC ]

Sun and PG&E announced a rebate program of upto $1000 on purchase of a T1000 or T2000 system. Details about the rebate

http://www.sun.com/rebates/

The innovation bar just got raised little higher. Now, not only you have to make your design low power and eco-friendly, but also make it qualify for rebate from the local utility company.

[ T: OpenSPARC ]