DailyTech - Sun's 16 Core "Rock" Processor

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Hardware Sun's 16 Core "Rock" Processor
Kristopher Kubicki (Blog) - March 14, 2006 11:36 PM

26 comment(s) - last by Clauzii.. on Mar 16 at 2:18 PM

New info on Sun's much talked about "Rock" processor finally surfaces

The Register was able to obtain some fascinating information about Sun's upcoming UltraSPARC T1 successor. The processor architecture, dubbed Rock, will have four distinct processor cores per chip with four distinct "processing engines" per core. With SMT, each processor is capable of 32 logical threads.

The Register also claims that the new Rock platform will be able to use UltraSPARC processors in parrallel and as co-processors. Rock will also have variations of the processor for multiple and single socket servers with very similar parameters found on AMD's Opteron lineup.

Sun recently made the move to use Fujitsu for the upcoming SPARC series CPUs, but Rock will not make an appearance until 2008.

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"Rock"???

By keitaro on 3/15/2006 1:51:39 AM , Rating: 2

With a name like that, imagine the tons of (bad) slogans people can think of with this.

RE: "Rock"???

By Griswold on 3/15/2006 7:44:21 AM , Rating: 1

Sun has hit rock bottom.
Dead as a rock.
Kill one company with 16 rocks.

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RE: "Rock"???

By DallasTexas on 3/15/06, Rating: 0

RE: "Rock"???

By Lord Zado on 3/15/2006 12:01:58 PM , Rating: 2

Trying to kill two birds (AMD/Intel) with one stone?

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RE: "Rock"???

By masher2

(blog) on 3/15/2006 1:24:28 PM , Rating: 2

Caught between "Rock" and a hard place?

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RE: "Rock"???

By Clauzii on 3/15/2006 10:06:09 PM , Rating: 2

Trying to kill two birds (AMD/Intel) with one stone?

If they´ll get to show off - probably in some areas of the market :)

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RE: "Rock"???

By Egglick on 3/15/2006 11:32:51 AM , Rating: 2

Then of course you've got the big debate on whether Rock will win out over Sledgehammer, or if Yonah will use the force against either of them.

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RE: "Rock"???

By Clauzii on 3/15/2006 10:12:38 PM , Rating: 2

Or will Eden be the place for us all to be?

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Who cares?

By IvanAndreevich on 3/15/2006 2:09:25 AM , Rating: 1

Niagara is crappy. Opterons own it.

Maybe Sun should stop making CPUs. All the CPUs they've made weren't that impressive (in the last 10 years anyway). Why do they insist on keeping it up?

Compare this sucker to Power 6

RE: Who cares?

By andrep74 on 3/15/2006 3:01:47 AM , Rating: 3

Niagara was built with a couple of things in mind, not as your BF2 server, though:

"How else would you describe a 72 W, 1.2 GHz chip that is almost 3 times (in SpecWeb2005) as fast as four Xeon cores at 2.8 GHz, which consume up to 300 W? Of course, there are a few snakes in the grass too, as T1 does not like every kind of server workload."

I'm sure some Sun engineers would take exception to your use of the word "crappy", until they realize that 1) you're an AMD fanboy, 2) you can't design chips yourself, and 3) you have no use for servers that can run anything other than a single-threaded game server app.

In the real world, web servers that can handle hundreds of concurrent users and use only 72W per processor, delivering reliability, scalability, and efficiency, are a Much-Desired Thing (tm).

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RE: Who cares?

By DigitalFreak on 3/15/2006 10:44:55 AM , Rating: 2

"I'm sure some Sun engineers would take exception to your use of the word "crappy", until they realize that 1) you're an AMD fanboy, 2) you can't design chips yourself, and 3) you have no use for servers that can run anything other than a single-threaded game server app."

Owned!!!!!

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RE: Who cares?

By AnaxagorasZeres on 3/15/2006 7:49:50 AM , Rating: 2

Not completely true, but if you bothered to know anything, Sun sells machines with Opterons in them.

And even budget POWER systems are bloody expensive.

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RE: Who cares?

By mrdelldude on 3/15/2006 10:07:03 AM , Rating: 2

Sun also recently sold systems with Xeons.

The x86 systems are, for the most part, their low end class of servers. They are selling x2100 systems start under a grand.

The Niagra and Rock are in a complete different class of computing than the x86 based systems.

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RE: Who cares?

By AnaxagorasZeres on 3/15/2006 12:01:38 PM , Rating: 2

Yeah. I looked at some of the Opteron Fire servers, and they were all entry level. The SPARC systems were obviously aimed at larger customers with deeper pockets.

I didn't know Sun sold servers with Xeons in them, though. I should hit up Google more often...

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Terrible ad slogan

By ThisSpaceForRent on 3/16/2006 8:32:25 AM , Rating: 2

I'm waiting for somebody at an ad agency to come up with something lame like:

If you buy one server this year, buy the one that rocks you to the core.

At that point I'd have to hurt someone, or pull a Rambus and sue for them infringing on my ideas.

RE: Terrible ad slogan

By Stele on 3/16/2006 9:42:10 AM , Rating: 2

While we're on this, we might wonder how bad other ad copies could be... what might the trimmed-down version of the Cell processor be called? 'Splinter Cell' :PP

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RE: Terrible ad slogan

By ThisSpaceForRent on 3/16/2006 11:16:37 AM , Rating: 2

Cell Junior is another option, hehe.

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RE: Terrible ad slogan

By Clauzii on 3/16/2006 2:18:23 PM , Rating: 2

Mini-Cell - To be used as addin for the MAC Mini :)

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sounds like....

By MDme on 3/14/2006 11:56:51 PM , Rating: 2

Cell in concept.

RE: sounds like....

By bersl2 on 3/15/2006 1:26:07 AM , Rating: 3

No, it's nothing like Cell at all.

Cell has one primary core and 7-8 cores with only basic processing capabilities, none of which are capable of running programs in the same way that the primary core can. This processor from Sun sounds like it has 16 cores, each just as capable as another in terms of running threads of execution.

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