So maybe there is hope for the Sun worshipers after all. In a recent interview (Reuters May 7, 2009), Oracle's Larry Ellison made a commitment to further SPARC technology. "We want to work with Fujitsu to design advanced features into the SPARC microprocessor aimed a improving Oracle database performance". Ellison further stated:

Sun was very successful for a very long time selling computer systems based on the SPARC chip and the Solaris operating system. Now with the added power of integrated Oracle software we think they can be again.

At Ctest Labs, we do have a big commitment to Sparc's theory of multicore. The Solaris operating system is also a major part of our infrastructure. We use Solaris both with Sparc and Opteron technology. If Tracey and I are gonna crash and burn while trying to solve AI-Complete problems, we might as well do it with Sparc technology. The thought of loosing Sparc or Solaris as the result of some silly-ole merger... Well, for awhile there, it was almost "goodbye cruel world". Now with Ellison's apparent support for Sparc, there's just a little more twist in my wrist when I hit the return key on my T1. After stumbling across the Ellison interview I went to the console of my Sun-Fire-T200 and typed:

/usr/sbin/psrinfo -v ; uname -X

and comforted each and everyone of my 8 cores and their 4 little hardware threads (32 logical cpus) letting them know not to worry that we're gonna have support and a future. After all, Mr. Ellison said so!.