Sun's 2-generation Niagara chip

The August 23 announcement by Sun Microsystems said its Niagara 2 chip will be able to run 64 scripts simultaneously, twice the processing power of other high-end chips.

Niagara 2 is expected to be released in the second half of 2007. Current Niagara version - UtraSparc T1 (8 cores) can only run 32 scripts (each core runs 4 scripts). Niagara 2 will also have 8 cores but each core will be twice as capable of processing scripts as UtraSparc T1 (8 scripts / core).

The first Niagara chips (Niagara) were really an ambitious design that Sun used to restore customer confidence after complaints that it had weaknesses in chip manufacturing technology.

The fact has shown that Sun has achieved some success from this effort, such as sales from the number of Niagara chip-integrated servers sold in the second quarter of 2006 to reach $ 100 million, just a few months after Sun started making adjustments in chip design (late 2005).

In general, the first Niagara version is primarily for low-end server types, leaning towards how to handle multiple tasks in parallel rather than handling individual tasks. This contrasts with the chips of IBM, Intel and AMD - often focusing on single-thread processing speed.

Niagara 2 takes Sun further on multithreading. Each core of this chip has two parts called a series group (thread group) with the ability to process 4 command files. This chip will achieve the best performance when operating on the Solaris operating system (Sun's own OS).

Doubling the chain processing capacity also means that the surface of the chip must expand by 20%. Meanwhile, the size of the chip is an extremely important factor for production costs and product efficiency.

However, since Niagara 2 is built on a high-end 65nm production line (Niagara version is 90nm), it can add more trasitor without increasing the area. In addition to the ability to double the performance, the Niagara 2 also features 4MB cache capacity (Niagara is 3MB), multi-encoded engines (Niagara single encoded), one PCI Express port, and four FB memory drivers. -DIMM, and two 10GB Ethernet ports.

Sun said the Niagara 2 version does not fully support multi-processor platforms. This also means that Niagara 2 lacks a mechanism to ensure the chip works well with other platforms, such as synchronizing cached data.

Promote single-string performance (single-thread)

Although focusing on the ability to handle aggregate chains, Sun is taking steps to improve single-chain performance. For example, every core of Niagara 2 has a mathematical engine called an FPU unit; while the Niagara version has only one shared FPU for 8 cores. Each core of Niagara 2 also has a stream processing unit (SPU), which speeds up encryption and decryption tasks.

Niagara 2 also incorporates many features to improve server stability. Hardware has the ability to automatically turn off a processing sequence, or a processing sequence, or an entire core if too many errors occur.

The most important part of Niagara is its low energy consumption, one of the top concerns of today's chip manufacturers. Sun said Niagara 2 will be very energy efficient through the control of the software. This software can close unused components of the chip.