Scaling Processor Throughput
"We designed these processors for applications that serve thousands of simultaneous users doing thousands of simultaneous transactions, which is so typical in the Web 2.0 environment," says Mat Keep, group product manager for CMT systems. "These applications are sensitive to the throughput, but not the clock speed of the processor."
In 2005 Sun introduced UltraSPARC T1, the industry's first CMT processor which had four cores and 32 threads, to help customers address skyrocketing energy prices. While competitors scrambled to introduce processors with up to 4 threads, Sun innovated again last year with the UltraSPARC T2 with eight cores that can execute 64 threads, and includes integrated security, networking, and I/O, making it the first system on a chip -- an ideal environment for virtualization and consolidation.
Now Sun is responding to the astonishing growth of the network economy and the throughput load generated by its millions of simultaneous users and transactions, with the new multi-socket Sun UltraSPARC T2 Plus processor. It adds symmetric multiprocessing (SMT) to the CoolThreads technology mix, and for the first time, multiple CMT processors can be used within a single system.
Quadruple Play
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Sun CTO Marc Tremblay has been called the "father of the throughput computing paradigm." He has co-developed several throughput computing techniques, including chip multiprocessing and chip multithreading. |
"This doubles and quadruples the number of threads within a single Solaris image," says Marc Tremblay, CTO of Sun Microelectronics, "and opens up many possibilities with a huge pool of cores and threads for the OS to schedule processes and software threads." UltraSPARC T2 Plus systems will take thread density to over 5,000 threads per data center rack, enabling users to blend the scalability and performance of traditional mid-range systems with the economies and efficiencies of proven CMT design.
"The cores and threads are managed by multithreaded Solaris for efficient utilization," says Tremblay, "and this huge number of threads means applications are no longer limited because threads aren't stepping on each other." Virtualization is improved as well. "Logical domains aren't restricted," he says, "and you wind up with hundreds of gigabytes of memory shared by hundreds of threads performing reads and writes without latency."
"It's about delivering new services so organizations can engage new communities, harness new revenue streams, implement new business models, create self-service environments, and improve efficiencies through virtualization," says Keep who adds that existing applications can be more readily scaled, "You can have more simultaneous searches to the same database, or more accesses from social sites."
Fewer Servers Needed
CoolThreads technology reduces the number of servers and processors needed to support throughput loads for web scale, HPC, and enterprise solutions, and lower clock speeds mean less power, reducing operating costs and providing more eco-responsible systems. "Instead of needing 8 or 16 servers to achieve our level of throughput, you only need one CMT-equipped server," says Keep, "and that means lower acquisition costs as well."
Sun's current line of UltraSPARC T1 and T2 based systems start at just $2,795. They are world leaders in network-intensive computing applications from web servers, to VoIP, to streaming media and web infrastructure, to clustered OLTP databases. New systems featuring the multi-socket UltraSPARC T2 Plus will soon extend Sun's CMT line-up from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.
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UltraSPARC T2 -- The First System on a Chip
The UltraSPARC T2 processor, the second generation of chips with Sun's CoolThreads technology, delivers eight cores and 64 threads in a single chip while consuming as much as a third less power as competing processors - as little as 95 watts.
Take a virtual tour of the UltraSPARC T2 processor.
The UltraSPARC T2 is also the first true "system on a chip," with memory interfaces, I/O interfaces, and network interfaces integrated directly onto the processor silicon. This revolutionary chip is the only processor with integrated dual, multithreaded 10GB Ethernet, and that translates to as much as four times the performance of current network interface cards. The chip also has one floating-point unit and one cryptographic unit integrated into each of its eight cores, yielding "zero cost" security.
Take a SecondLife walkthrough of the UltraSPARC T2 with chief architect Rick Hetherington.
Open Sourcing UltraSPARC -- OpenSPARC
Sun's open source technology extends beyond software, and all the way to the microprocessor with the OpenSPARC initiative, an open source project based on the 64-bit, multithreaded UltraSPARC T2 and T1 processors.
Sun provides the OpenSPARC T2 and OpenSPARC T1 register transfer level processor designs to the open source community via the GPL license. Today, 32 universities have adopted the OpenSPARC program in their curricula, and developers everywhere are using the world's first open source CPU to create new innovations at the chip level.
"We offer the industry's only complete open source technology stack, from the processor through the hypervisor, the operating system, middleware, systems management, and development tools," says Mat Keep.
Join the OpenSPARC.net community
CoolThreads Systems for You
Sun's award-winning CoolThreads systems, ranging from blades to rack servers and modular systems, are available now using the Try and Buy program, and they start at just $2,795. Watch this video to learn more about Sun's innovative CMT systems design.
Forthcoming UltraSPARC T2 Plus systems will be ideal for enterprise applications, especially for users who are opening up their back-office applications to customers, partners and communities by adding Web 2.0-type functionality.
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