Sun has given its newest processor a more permanent label than its "Niagara" code name: the UltraSparc T1.
Sun plans to unveil the name on Monday as part of an event devoted to the company's emphasis on computing equipment that consumes less power than current technology, a big problem for customers grappling with electricity bills, as well as heating and cooling issues. Sun will sell UltraSparc T1-based systems later this quarter; a likely launch time is Sun's quarterly Network Computing event on 6 December in New York.
The UltraSparc T1 runs at 1.2GHz and consumes less than 75W running ordinary workloads, said Fadi Azhari, a marketing director for Sun's Scalable Systems group. Its maximum power consumption of 72W is less than the practical maximum of 135W for Intel's dual-core Xeon and a maximum of 95W for a mainstream dual-core Opteron from AMD.
The T1 has eight independent processing engines, called cores, each able to simultaneously execute four instruction sequences, called threads. Sun also has applied a trademark to this aggressive multithreading approach, calling it CoolThreads.
With the multicore, multithreaded approach, the chip can perform many tasks simultaneously. For higher-end jobs requiring fast single-thread performance, Sun plans to release a cousin to the T1, code-named Rock, in 2008.
Sun is trying to reverse Unix server market share losses by rebuilding its server line from scratch. Along with its Sparc models — UltraSparc T1, a successor called Niagara II that can work in multiprocessor servers and Rock — Sun also has embraced Opteron in its "Galaxy" line of x86 servers. The x86 machines can run Windows and Linux as well as Sun's Solaris, the only operating system available for the Sparc family.
Sun hasn't been afraid to raise expectations for Niagara, which earlier had been due to arrive in 2006. Sun is gearing the systems for lower-end network-intensive tasks such as serving Web pages and running Java application server software.
Although Niagara has eight cores, Sun will sell models with six and four cores as well. Those parts aren't separate designs, but rather are eight-core chips in which not all of the cores work. As six- or four-core chips, however, the processors are completely functional because the defects exist only in the disabled cores. Chip manufacturers have used this technique for years to repackage high-end chips with slight, but avoidable, defects.
Sun plans two Niagara systems, the 1.75-inch thick "Erie" model and the 3.5-inch thick "Ontario" model.
Talkback
This was an interesting article.
This new technology has the potential to eliminate racks of web & blade servers with a single 1U high unit from SUN (with similar CPU power, vastly reduced power/cooling requirements, and tremendous complexity reduction!)
Two 1U units of 32 threads means thousands of web server threads instead of dozens of web servers, fewer shared network area storage fiber channel ports, reduction of EMC cabinets usage, etc.
The IT Architect has been spending years (since Y2K spending ceased resulting in the Tech market crash) consolidating multiple data centers into fewer locations.
There has not been the possibility to truly consolidate a single data center down to fewer servers until Solaris 10 and UltraSPARC T1. With technology like this, there is no need for a multiple blade servers - now a virtual blade gets a dedicated thread in a Solaris 10 container.
Need more CPU? Drag your container (holding your application) in your N1 GUI from your $8K 1U high T1000 to your $20K 2U high T2000 Server... now you have 32 threads to play with.
Need D/R? Drag your container in your N1 GUI to a new T2000 in a D/R site.
Need automated failover from multiple servers? Have the container from multiple servers fail over to a cluster of available T2000's in a foreign location, on an as-need basis.
Infrastructure management has never been so simple. Disaster recovery has never been so simple. This is what Information Technology Industry had been dreaming about for 30 years - only Sun has delivered... on an open source CPU and open source Operating System.
There is no risk... if SUN goes out of business, there are multiple other hardware vendors to pick up the tab and there are no legal patents to struggle with.
This new design is so radical - it is very possible that Sun may have just put themselves out of business. SUN's own low end server may be the coffin nail for it's own company.
On the other side of the coin - THERE IS NO BUSINESS REASON to deploy Linux or Windows in a Tier 0 architecture - when the TCO will be 10x higher than a Sun Fire T1000 or Sun Fire T2000.
Every CFO and CIO better learn what SUN offers to their bottom line. Only a fool would not understand what this means... this changes everything.
David J. Halko
NCR Managed Services Architecture