is sparc dead?

David S. Miller, a world-reknowned Linux kernel hacker, key contributor to the sparclinux/sparc64 port, and all-around nice guy, wrote to debian-sparc a great message that starts:

You can laugh and call it Wintendo all you want, but even the I/O performance of modern x86 (and Opteron) systems blows Sparc away.

Later on, he writes:

[...] If I’m setting up a high end web server,
I don’t think I’d be using Sparc thanks

If I wanted a fast machine with good cpu performance and a fast disk
and networking, I’d get a 3+ Ghz Xeon or an Opteron with PCI-X or
perferably PCI Express. [...]

Read the whole message to get a good explanation of why he feels this way and the numbers behind his assertions.

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