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UltraSPARC T2 processor

If you run windows or other intel compatible platform, you are aware of quad core CPUs. They are capable of processing up to 4 simultaneous threads at the same time. Before multicore, there was hyperthreading where on single core you could execute two threads from same process at the same time. Due to nature of consumer computer utilization, multicore won over hyperthread technology on this platform. When you enter server realm, having hyperthreads actually does improve performance with higher degree of success as servers are built to run processes with many concurrent threads. One platform that does take care of massively paralel execution is based around new chips from Sun. Sun's web appliances started to surface more than a year ago with initial version of chip codenamed Niagara. In its original version, the chip combined 8 cores with 4 hyperthreads per core to provide up to 32 concurrently executed thread.

This year, Sun released UltraSPARC T2 CPU. This is an advanced version that combines very low power consumption (95 watts) with integrated 10Gbit ethernet and PCI Express on board. The CPU provides 8 cores with 8 hyperthreads. You can run up to 64 concurrent threads on this cpu at cost of approximately 2 Watts per thread. UltraSPARC T2 has integrated floating point unit on each core so you can utilize eight floating point units simultaneously. The chip is geared towards web appliance optimization so it also includes cryptographic processing unit on each of the eight cores.

Solaris platform is perfect fit

Solaris has long been known for highly optimized threading. In fact it is faster to create/run/destroy thread on Solaris than it is to resume/run/susped the same thread. This makes software development easier as programmers do not need to create elaborate thread pools to manage load. With simpler software design, the development proceeds faster and is less likely to be a victim of deadlock or other nasty bug possibly associated with mismanaged threadpools.

If you prefer to run an alternative OS, the system also ships with Ubuntu Linux

Speed comparision

Sun chips run at 1.2GHz and 1.4GHz. It is hard to compare this platform to intel compatible CPUs because UltraSPARC is a RISC cpu (reduced instruction set). All RISC cpus provide small number of instructions that can be greatly optimized on execution pipeline. To get a better feel for speed, we need to look at comparable results using SPEC CPU2006:

CPU	Cores	Threads	SPECint2006	SPECfp2006
AMD Opteron 890	2	1	13.9	13.5
AMD Opteron 2222SE	2	1	14.9	15.2
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700	4	1	19.7	16.6
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850	2	1	22.6	19.3
Sun UltraSPARC T2 @1.4GHz	8	8	78.3est	62.3est

Results of Sun UltraSPARC T2 running at 1.4 GHz are still being generated at this point, so the numbers are provided only as estimates. Keep an eye on www.spec.org as the results should be published shortly.

How much does it cost

As of December 2007, following base configurations are available from Sun in form of Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 Server. I did not check price and availability from Fujitsu company, which also sells these systems.

4 cores 32threads, 4GB Ram at $13.995
8 cores 64 threads, 16GB Ram at $24.995
8 cores 64 threads, 32GB Ram at $30.995

All of these come in 1U form factor. To cram so much power into so little space is possible only due to very low power consumption of main cpu. With You can build up great amount of processing power in an existing datacenter without the need for additional cooling or power capacities installed.