The first implementations of the new processor come in the new Sun Blade[tm] 1000 high-end workstations and the new Sun Fire[tm] 280R workgroup server, both announced today.
"The UltraSPARC III chip is the engine that will power the next generation of Sun systems," said John Shoemaker, executive vice president, System Products Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Looking back at the early days of the SPARC[tm] architecture, the SuperSPARC[tm] chip kicked off Network Computing. UltraSPARC I and II processors propelled Internet Computing. The UltraSPARC III processor takes Sun to the second generation of dot-com system architectures aimed, as its predecessors, at addressing real problems with real solutions today."
The UltraSPARC III processor arrives to market as the tallest peak in a competitive 64-bit processor landscape, offering a balanced, multidimensional portfolio of industry-bests in nearly every category of performance: clock speed, scaling capability, multiprocessor linearity, and processing bandwidth. The UltraSPARC III processor design is the only microprocessor on the market with an integrated scalable memory design, frequency isolation to allow mixed-speed CPU support within a single system, and a first-of-its-kind single-cycle coherency protocol.
Initially released at 900, 750 and 600 MHz, publicly released roadmaps for the UltraSPARC III processor position the design solidly as a GigaHertz (GHz)-class microprocessor. The application of advancing process technologies, including copper interconnect, indicate clock speeds in the 1.5 GHz and more range when the UltraSPARC III processor reaches its full design potential.
The SPARC family has consistently offered increased scalability with each new addition to the family. The UltraSPARC III continues this tradition, offering a several-fold increase in the possible number of processors. The UltraSPARC III chip can scale to hundreds of processors sharing a single coherent memory domain, enabling overall system memory size and performance to increase linearly with additional processors.
As the second generation of the SPARC 64-bit architecture, the UltraSPARC III chip provides complete binary compatibility between applications written for previous generations of the architecture, delivering unmatched investment protection for Sun customers upgrading to next-generation systems. Furthermore, Sun's continuing development of the UltraSPARC II processor -- underscored by the announcement of the UltraSPARC IIe processor on September 11-- will extend the economically useful life of systems based on this architecture well into the future.
In terms of features contributing to total processing bandwidth, the UltraSPARC III chip delivers 9.6 Gigabyte/second peak Processor-to-Interconnect address channel speeds, more than twice as much as previous UltraSPARC chips. The UltraSPARC III also runs on a 4.8 Gigabyte/second memory pathway. To achieve this, the processor incorporates new architectural features such as a dedicated memory controller designed to reduce latencies to take full advantage of these high-bandwidth design features.
Reliability features contributing to high availability for UltraSPARC III processor-based systems include a new integrated "Uptime Bus" that isolates and contains error correction away from main memory areas. Error Checking and Correction on L2 caches add additional mechanisms for fast and reliable error detection and correction.
The SPARC architecture, the Solaris[tm] Operating Environment and system level product architectures were designed from the start to work seamlessly together. This tight collaboration between the Solaris Operating Environment and SPARC architecture and system design teams have resulted in the computer industry's largest and most successful family of binary compatible systems setting new standards for performance, reliability, scalability and investment protection.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision - The Network Is The Computer[tm] -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to dot-com their businesses. With $15.7 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com/.