Simon’s Blog

So - we’re on the verge of the launch of a new class of server. These new servers will deal with large numbers of threads in parallel. Sun’s new Niagara (also known as UltraSPARC T1) based servers will be first onto the market - the single CPU boxes will be able to deal with 32 threads concurrently: eight cores, with each core able to run four threads.

These kind of chips are completely fascinating from a programming point of view. Developers are going to have to change the way they think about using threads. But what I’m really looking forward to finding out is how fast these new boxes are going to run (compared to the competition), when performing the kinds of tasks for which they were designed. I genuinely have no idea what the answer is. The philosphy of the new chips from Sun is, I think, well-described by The Inquirer as “threads at all cost”, compared to what we’ve been used to up to now in chip design: “clock speed at all costs”. So the big question is: has Sun got it right with its new chip design?

I’ll be watching the launch of the new Sun Niagara-based servers with interest.