Sun Microsystems today unveiled its new UltraSPARC IV processor, introducing chip multithreading to its mid-range and high-end server lines and offering Sun's first deliverable on its Throughput Computing initiative.

Sun made the announcement in conjunction with Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif.   IBM, Transmeta and others will reveal details about next generation processors and technology during the event this week.

Sun's UltraSPARC IV will be released in the first half of 2004 and has the potential to double the throughput of the company's existing high-end and mid-range systems, the company said in a statement.

UltraSPARC IV uses chip multithreading (CMT) to achieve the throughput increase. The technology allows the processor to execute tens of threads simultaneously. Initial servers will see double the throughput, Sun said in a statement. The company expects to continue to improve throughput with server blades in 2006 that deliver 15 times the performance of the company's current UltraSPARC IIIi servers.

The dual-threaded architecture of the first member of the next generation processor family consists of two UltraSPARC III cores and includes on-chip tags for 8 Mbytes of off chip 2-way set-associative Level 2 cache per core, according to Sun. The processor includes an on-chip memory controller supporting up to 15 Gbytes of DRAM. The new processor will initially operate at 1200 MHz.

The processor is built with Texas Instrument's 130 nm process technology, and future members of the family will be based on TI's 90 nm processes.

In addition, the technology will be backwards compatible with development tools and application software from Sun.

By: DocMemory
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