Sun began developing the new Niagara 3 chip version

Sun Microsystems engineers have begun designing the Niagara 3 chip, a new member of the Sparc family, built on a 45nm technology line with multiple cores and supporting more scripts than current chip versions. .

Sun has also started selling servers using the first-generation Niagara chip version - officially called UltraSparc T1, and plans to sell the first Niagara 2 systems in the second half of next year.

Niagara 1 is built on the 90nm technology line; while Niagara 2's technology is 65nm; and Niagara 3 is 45nm. The more sophisticated line technology (smaller nm) will allow multiple circuits to be mounted on the same circuit board area.

Niagara processors all emphasize the ability to aggregate performance for multiple tasks running simultaneously rather than focusing on a single task. This is also Sun's direction in its efforts to regain the lost server market share for Intel, AMD and IBM.

Niagara 1 has 8 processing cores, each of which can process 4 scripts simultaneously. Meanwhile, Niagara 2 increases the ability to simultaneously support scripts from 32 to 64 (8 cores, each processing 8 scripts). And Niagara 3 will follow this trend, in addition to integrating more cores, the chip will also be enhanced with memory bandwidth, which helps to perform operations faster.

Sun has not yet announced the time to complete Niagara 3, as well as when it will hit the market.