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Sun
Microsystems has completed the initial design for its next-generation
Rock processor, and expects to launch the device in the second half of
2008.
Server vendor determined to hold on to multi-threading lead.
Sun
Microsystems has completed the initial design for its next-generation
Rock processor, and expects to launch the device in the second half of
2008.
Rock is designed as a multi-threaded processor that allows multiple processes to perform calculations in parallel.
Applications
that benefit from multi-threading typically perform a huge number of
relatively straightforward tasks, such as web and email servers.
Mainstream
processors such as Intel's Pentium and Xeon chips perform better in
complex calculations such as data analysis and 3D rendering.
Rock will feature 16 processor cores per chip, up from the four on Sun's current T1 processors codenamed Niagara.
Each
Niagara core features eight threads, allowing for 24 simultaneous
calculations. Sun did not disclose the number of threads that it plans
that offer on Rock chips.
The company has traditionally
dominated the high-throughput computing market, but Intel revealed last
year that it aims to create a processor with 80 cores by 2010.
The
so-called TerraFLOP processor will target "mega data centres" that run
the world's hosted applications such as Salesforce.com, YouTube and
Google.
IBM has also been marketing its eight-core Cell processor that ships as part of Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming console.
The
processor is based on IBM's Power architecture and is also available
for enterprise servers running a special version of the Fedora Linux
distribution. The chip targets number crunching rather than high
throughput applications.
Read the original article: http://www.crn.com.au/story.aspx?CIID=71646&src=site-marq
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