We’ve reported on a few occasions about the work on Niagara 2, the code-name of the now launched the Sun UltraSPARC T2. The processor is the successor to the UltraSPARC T1, which was quite a multithreading monster when it arrived. As Sun has no intention of being less sensational with the successor UltraSPARC T2, it is also a multithreadig monster. Sun UltraSPARC T2 sports eight cores that can handle eight threads each, 64 threads all in all. Sun even announced the UltraSPARC T2 as the world’s fastest microprocessor. Besides the multithreading capabilities the processor has 4MB L2 cache and one FPU per pipeline. For added functionality there is also two on-chip 10 GB Ethernet ports and PCI Express I/O expansion.
According to the press release the UltraSPARC T2 offers twice the performance/watt ratio of the UltraSPARC T1 and ten times the floating point performance.
Sun also says that the UltraSPARC T2 has been designed with virtualization in mind. Sun even says that the UltraSPARC T2 together with Sun’s own operating system Solaris is the best virtualization platform available today. This combination allows UltraSPARC T2 to run 64 different applications at the same time.
Sun has managed to excel in reducing the power consumption though, UltraSPARC T2 consumes as little as less than 2W per thread, which means that the 64 thread monster consumes less than nominal 95W. The chip is expected to cost less than $1,000 and we have to say that this chip looks like a quite impressive foe for both AMD and Intel.
Servers isn’t everything though, and Sun says that stripped down versions of the chip may appear in many other devices, such as networking equipment or even cars.
