Sun hits back at Gartner report

A Gartner note warning of quality control problems with CPUs in high-end servers has been rubbished by Sun Microsystems. Ian Meakin, director of Sun's data centre operations in the UK, said that the note Gartner sent on the 16 November, describing quality control problems with 400MHz, 4MB CPUs, said that the information was misleading and out of date. He said: "The report suggests this is a widespread problem when it isn't. They [Gartner] talked to 10 customers and extrapolated the issue from those conversations." He continued: "We don't have a quality or reliability issue at all." Further, said Meakin, Sun is no longer shipping 400MHz 4MB CPUs, it currently supplies 400MHz 8MB parts, so the report is out of date. He admitted that Sun had identified some problems in the last calendar year but said that those related to third party products and his company had worked both with its customers and its suppliers to fix those problems. "Like any manufacturer, Sun does take quality control very seriously indeed," he said. "We have shipped 400,000 systems and there's been a miniscule amount of problems. This should be put in that context." One end user, who wished to keep his name and company out of the rumble, commented: "I note that Sun doesn't go on about the fibre channel array issues in its refutation of the problems. And besides, I counted 30 sites in my company (that's only in Europe) where the a5x00 will be or has been changed; the problem is that "miniscule" is too much, where the DR decisions already made imply that two hours out of action and we're out of business." ® See also Gartner warns of Sun server realiability