Sun blasts 'insufficient' Moore's Law

Sun chief Jonathan Schwartz says that Moore's Law is no longer sufficient

Moore's Law is unable to keep up with the computing demands of Web 2.0 companies and enterprises that rely heavily on simulations and data analysis, according to Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive at Sun Microsystems. 

Such organisations differ from mainstream enterprise IT buyers, for which current generation technology suffices to fulfil their computing needs, he added.

These more demanding customers will use any available computing power to serve online data more quickly or run more advanced analyses to outpace the competition.

As a result, they require instant access to the fastest technology available, Schwartz claimed in a meeting with reporters at a Sun office in Menlo Park, California where the company unveiled its Black Box containerised data centre. 

"There is a very significant proportion of [enterprises] in the world for which Moore's Law will be insufficient to depress their spending," said Schwartz.

"The net result is that they will start building very large data centres and continue to build them for as long as they can because there is a return on that grid.

"There is return from better analytics, from smarter decisions, from new customers and new value."

Schwartz maintained that there is no such thing as 'good enough' technology for enterprises when it comes to these grids. The only limiting factor is the amount of money that a company is willing to invest.

Sun's Project Black Box targets compute hungry organisations with servers deployed inside a standard shipping container measuring 20' x 8' x 8'. Users have only to hook up power and networking cables and provide water for cooling.

"As customers continue to look at where they invest new dollars, their appetite and willingness to put a quarter of a billion dollars into a data centre that takes three years to build is plummeting," concluded Schwartz.

• A video of Schwartz explaining the 'insufficiency' of Moore's Law is available on the Silicon Valley Sleuth blog, as is a video of the Black Box unveiling.