Vijay Tatkar's Blog

Browsable index to Sun Studio Tech Articles
There is now a browsable index to all the Sun Studio technical articles on SDN at:
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/documentation/techart/index.jsp

Kudos to the team on getting it there; it will now be easier to find Sun Studio tech articles!

Posted by tatkar ( Dec 18 2008, 09:34:34 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Toshiba laptop to factory preinstall OpenSolaris
Sun and Toshiba announced today a factory-ready laptop running OpenSolaris.
At last, at long last! Its high time we got a popular laptop maker to pre-install (Open)Solaris (they will actually start shipping in 2009). Reading some of the comments on blogs and news stories, reaction seems to be more on the positive side. Maybe, now I can find an excuse to upgrade my laptop, though its technically in reasonable running condition!
Posted by tatkar ( Dec 16 2008, 10:58:30 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [3]

Installed OpenSolaris 2008.11 with Sun Studio Express 11/08
I just installed OpenSolaris 2008.11 (you can get it here, tho I got mine from an internal Sun DVD Test/Evaluation CD) on my x86 laptop in addition to another laptop that I use for shows (like Sun TechDays) and customer presos etc. To confess, my dual-boot laptop was still booting SXDE from Build 70 (its currently at 101 and the builds are biweekly, so I was about a year off :-)
The installation went smoothly. I didnt expect any issues since I know Acer Ferrari 4000 laptop has all the right characteristics and devices that OpenSolaris recognizes. Here are some of my observations that I would like to share here:

• The LiveCD install took 25 minutes (yes, I timed it). No issues (no partitioning required since I was reusing my older partition)
• Then I installed  other desirable packages, using the GUI Package Manager. This GUI now works better than it did in the previous OpenSolaris(2008.05) release. This took me another 25 minutes or so (that would depend on the speed of the internet connection for most folks, I suspect). I installed the following packages:
• amp-dev
• ss-dev
• netbeans
• gcc-dev
• hpc-dev
• webstackui
• openoffice

I now have everything I need: OpenOffice, Developer Tools (Sun Studio, NetBeans and GNU toolchain), AMP/Web tools, HPC tools (Clustertools). Went without a hitch and I'm happier now with the new look-and-feel and overall functionality. I also have the WR breaking Sun Studio Express 11/08 installed.  Later, I hope to blog about features as I try them out.
I've heard some good things about the new ZFS Time Slider; thats the first one to check out.

Posted by tatkar ( Dec 12 2008, 12:46:43 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

3 new Sun Studio World Records with AMD quad-core Sun x64 servers
Sun announced today enhancements to the Sun Fire(TM) x64 servers and Sun Blade(TM) systems lineup.
The new lineup includes a newer rev of the quad-core Opteron chips, the so-called Shanghai processors.
The new world records are in the area of SPECint_rate, SPECompL2001 and SPECompM2001

• Sun Fire X4440 server's (16 cores/4 chips/16 threads) SPECompL2001 result of 175,648 makes it the best-performing x86 system on the planet.
• The versatile Sun Blade X6440 server module (16 cores/4 chips/16 threads) produced SPECompM2001 result of 35,896 is highest for a blade platform
• Sun Fire X4600 server, equipped with eight Dual-Core AMD Opteron model 8384 processors produced the World Record SPECint_rate2006 score of 386.

These benchmarks are with OpenSolaris 2008.05 OS and Sun Studio Express 11/08 compilers. You can download OpenSolaris here and Sun Studio Express compilers here.

Required Disclosures:
SPEC, SPECint, SPECjbb, SPECweb and SPEComp are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.
Results from http://www.spec.org and this announcement as of 12/6/2008.

Sun Blade X6440 server module (4 chips, 16 cores, 16 OMP threads), 35896 SPECompMpeak2001.
Sun Fire X4600 M2 server, 386 SPECint_rate2006.
Sun Fire X4440 server (4 chips, 16 cores, 16 OMP threads),175,648 SPECompLpeak2001.
Posted by tatkar ( Dec 09 2008, 04:09:02 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]