|
Sun Microsystems's new chip unit has wasted no time picking up a
customer. The company today revealed that Marvell will craft a set of
products built around one of Sun's networking chip designs.
The Sun product in question is the infamous [SIC] NIC aka the the
Sun x8 Express Dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber XFP Low Profile aka
'Project Neptune.' Sun released
the 10GbE NIC (network interface card) in February, and now Marvell
plans to pump out its own gear based on the ASIC behind Sun's design.
While both companies declined to disclose fine details behind their
financial arrangement, Sun did say that it will collect royalties from
Marvell.
Sun Microsystems's new chip unit has wasted no time picking up a
customer. The company today revealed that Marvell will craft a set of
products built around one of Sun's networking chip designs.
The Sun product in question is the infamous [SIC] NIC aka the the
Sun x8 Express Dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber XFP Low Profile aka
'Project Neptune.' Sun released
the 10GbE NIC (network interface card) in February, and now Marvell
plans to pump out its own gear based on the ASIC behind Sun's design.
While both companies declined to disclose fine details behind their
financial arrangement, Sun did say that it will collect royalties from
Marvell.
Last month, Sun created a separate chip unit under the leadership of
longtime processor guru David Yen. The company hopes the chip group
will attract a number of customers as it looks to license out designs
for multi-core processors and new networking gear.
The [SIC] NIC handles software threads in a virtualized fashion. It
has 24 different pipes for various software threads, which makes it
possible to, say, run 20 application threads and one e-mail traffic
thread across the silicon.
The threading magic requires Sun's Solaris operating system and a specialized set of software code-named Crossbow.
So, a win for Sun's chip unit is also a win for the Solaris camp, since
Marvell will no doubt begin its effort with Sun's Solaris drivers in
hand rather than charging into unchartered territory with Windows or
Linux.
Sun can benefit by the volume Marvell will be driving, Yen told
us. There are some financial advantages with royalties coming on the
revenue side. But, personally, I view the strategic value as being
higher than any near-term financial benefit.
Marvell has committed to releasing a number of products based on
Sun's technology and will aim the hardware at Sun and other server
OEMs, according to a spokeswoman. These products will broaden
Marvell's LAN product portfolio into the server segment, beyond
enterprise and consumer PC markets, she said.
Both Sun and Marvell pitch the [SIC] NIC as a solution to the
bottlenecks being created by thread-heavy software and multi-core
processors.
This is a six-lane highway in each direction, Yen said. It really
smooths the flow from the software jobs coming in all the way to the
processing center.
On the long-term licensing front, Sun hopes to generate broader
interest around its multi-core UltraSPARC T1 chip. It has open sourced
the processor's design and is working with universities such as
Stanford and UC Santa Cruz to have professors and students develop
their own versions of the product. Along those lines, Sun has developed
single-core, single-thread versions of the UltraSPARC T1 that can fit
into FPGAs giving students room to add whatever features they would
like to experiment with, Yen said.
Buoyed by its early success with the new chip unit, Sun may consider
reviving some processor efforts. The company, for example, scrapped a
project code-named Jupiter that would have provided a co-processor for
Sun's upcoming Rock-based servers. While not committing to Jupiter in
particular, Yen did say that Sun has more room to look at such research
now, if it thinks a broader audience might flock to the products.
I think there is a new perspective, Yen said.
Marvell declined to provide a possible ship date for its line of [SIC] NIC products.
Read the original article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/03/marvell_sun_nicsic/
|
Get Informed 
