UltraSPARC T2 Processor Offers 64 Concurrent Threads on a Chip - Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems announced its new UltraSPARC T2 processor (formerly known as the Niagara 2 project), the industry’s first 64-thread system on a chip (eight cores, eight threads per core). Each thread of UltraSPARC T2 is able to run its own operating system. This feature enable the processor to deliver a whopping 64-way system on a single chip. By integrating cores, threads, memory controllers, networking, cryptography and I/O, plus tight integration with the Sun Solaris Operating System, the new processor improves reliability, increases performance, and reduces complexity while lowering costs and power consumption.

David Yen, Sun Microsystems, said:

The UltraSPARC T2 processor also makes possible a new breed of compact, power-efficient, highly integrated devices-going beyond servers to routers, switches, network devices, medical imaging, industrial printing and more. With UltraSPARC T2 technology, we can bring the speed and scalability of chip multithreading into much wider use-and provide welcome alternatives to companies that want commodity economics without commodity performance…

Sun UltraSPARC T2 Processor

The UltraSPARC T2 processor bring together the key functions of multiple systems-virtualization, processing, networking, security, floating point units and accelerated memory access. Integrating these elements on a single piece of silicon reduces cost and increases performance, reliability and energy efficiency-making it the superior choice for a diversity of workloads, from networking equipment to high-performance computing or storage devices.

Benefits:

• Unprecedented throughput and integration
  • The UltraSPARC T2 processor integrates: unmatched computing power, high-bandwidth networking, advanced crypto acceleration, and I/O
  • The UltraSPARC T2 processor packs the most cores and threads per chip of any general-purpose processor available
  • Powered by fewer than 95 W — nominal — the nextgeneration UltraSPARC T2 processor boasts the highest power efficiency available with less than 2 W per thread
  • One floating-point unit (FPU) per core, with 10 times the floating-point throughput of the UltraSPARC T1 processor
  • Four integrated memory controllers and 33 percent more L2 cache than the UltraSPARC T1 processor
• Revolutionary multithreaded networking
  • Sun offers integrated multithreaded 10 GbE, which helps eliminate network I/O bottlenecks, enables faster network access, and helps improve rack performance
• Zero cost security
  • Sun’s integrated crypto outperforms competing accelerators by more than 10 times, with virtually no performance degradation
  • With one crypto unit integrated per core, the processor supports the 10 most common ciphers, including NSA-approved algorithms
• Fast I/O expansion
  • Eight lanes of PCI-Express I/O expansion integrated on a single chip
  • Accelerates I/O-intensive applications, such as OLTP databases, backup server operations, and streaming media
• The consolidation processor
  • Provides more consolidation/virtualization flexibility than any processor in its class, with massive compute and network threading for maximum configuration flexibility — up to 64 Logical Domains (LDoms) on just one processor
  • Virtualization is even more cost-effective with free Solaris Containers and LDoms

Sun’s UltraSPARC T2 processor employs the CoolThreads CMT (chip multithreading technology). At 1/10 to 1/30 the power consumption of competitive offerings, the UltraSPARC T2 processor sets the gold standard for green computing and efficiency, combining the industry’s lowest power consumption with double the cores, 16 times the threads, 4 times the throughput, with on-chip network and security functionality.

Key features of UltraSPARC T2 processor:

• High-throughput processing - Eight cores and eight threads per core accelerate throughput as shown by two world-record, single-chip SPEC CPU scores, based on tests that delivered 78.3 est. SPECint_rate2006 and a 62.3 est. SPECfp_rate2006. The UltraSPARC T2 processor has twice the thread count of Sun's UltraSPARC T1 processor, which recently set a world record on ten Sun Blade T6300 Server Modules delivering 8253.21 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard*
• Networking - Dual, virtualizable, multithreaded 10 Gigabit-per-second Ethernet ports with built-in packet classification ensure fast access to networks and server-to-server communications
• Computation - Eight floating point units extend the benefits of CMT to high-performance computing workloads for scientific applications; world record single-chip SPECfp_rate2006 and world-record single-chip SPECompM2001 scores
• Security - Eight cryptographic acceleration units and a total of 10 independent functions address ever-heightening security needs, including NSA-approved algorithms, without a performance penalty
• Memory access - Quad memory controllers deliver more than 50 Gigabytes-per-second of memory access
• Input/Output - Eight lanes of industry-standard PCI Express I/O speed applications like streaming media, database read/write and data back-up
• Software support - The massively threaded Solaris OS takes excellent advantage of the highly threaded processors and enables open and cost-effective virtualization

Sun will provide the UltraSPARC T2 processor design to the free and open source community via the GPL license.  The company  is working to release source code for the UltraSPARC T2 processor to the OpenSPARC community. Recently, Sun announced the following to give a head start to the development community around OpenSPARC T2:

• A programmer's reference manual - Jumpstarts software ports, operating system ports and tools development for OpenSPARC T2 projects
• OpenSPARC T2 beta review - This program provides early access to a limited number of hardware designers and tool developers to begin working with the state-of-the-art CMT processor with system-on-a-chip functionality. The program catalyzes the development of a community for OpenSPARC T2, speeds the debugging process and leads to a better first release of the technology
• Microarchitecture specifications - Detailed description of the features and functionalities of the OpenSPARC T2 hardware blocks help hardware and system designers innovate and potentially create new applications

The UltraSPARC T2 provides support for the open source Solaris operating system, and other real-time operating systems, as well as future versions of Ubuntu Linux.

Mark Murphy, global alliances manager at Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, stated:

We are excited about exploring the capabilities of the UltraSPARC T2 processor…

…We certify Ubuntu on the SPARC architecture as we believe it is at the forefront of what's possible in processing and for many Ubuntu users this is of critical importance. UltraSPARC T2 shows Sun continues to push the boundaries and we are proud to be alongside pushing with them.

Key applications of UltraSPARC T2 processor

• Single-socket rackmount and blade servers
• WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) infrastructure
• 3G/4G telco infrastructure
• Network infrastructure

The UltraSPARC T2 processor is available in production quantities this quarter. Prices start at US$1,000 (?)

More info: Sun’s UltraSPARC T2 Processor