Sun's Eco-Friendly Chip

Looking to leapfrog its rivals, today Sun Microsystems announced an “eco-friendly” server chip that it claims will deliver more performance while requiring less electricity than competing microprocessors. UltraSparc T1 processor, code-named Niagara, has eight computing engines on a single chip, with each core capable of handling up to four tasks at once, Sun said. It uses a 90-nanometer process and runs at 1.2 gigahertz (GHz), but Sun claims its performance matches that of 9.6 GHz chips.

It expects to ship systems based on the processor by December-end. The new chip uses an average 70 watts against the usual 150-200 watts required by server chips from Intel and IBM, Sun said. Sun is touting the chip as “eco-friendly.” It said removing the world’s web servers and replacing them with half the number of UltraSparc T1-based systems would have the same effect on carbon dioxide emissions as planting 1m trees.

“It’s time the technology industry took a stand tripling your datacenter performance shouldn’t mean tripling your power bill and needing more coal-fired plants,” said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s COO. If it lives up to the claims, the UltraSparc T1 could help Sun boost its traditional business of selling servers based on its own Sparc chips and Solaris operating system. It has been struggling since the high-tech bust of ‘00, as customers flocked to less expensive systems built with commodity Intel chips and less expensive or free software.

Sun claimed that the chip gives the company a five-year leap on IBM's 'Power' and Intel's 'Xeon' processors. "We have not had a performance advantage with Sparc in the past few years, but now we have an irrefutable performance advantage," he said. Details of how the Ultrasparc T1 will fit into Sun's server range are expected next month.