UltraSPARC T2

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Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T2 microprocessor, is a multithreading, multi-core CPU. It is the successor to the UltraSPARC T1. The chip is sometimes referred to by the codename Niagara II. Sun plans to start selling servers with the T2 processor in Q3 2007.



New Features
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The T2 is a commodity derivative of the UltraSPARC series of microprocessors, targeting internet workloads in computers, storage and networking devices. The processor, manufactured in 65 nm, is available with eight CPU cores, and each core is able to handle eight threads concurrently. Thus the processor is capable of processing up to 64 concurrent threads. Other new features include:

-Speed bump for each thread, increased to 1.4 GHz from 1.2 GHz
-one PCI Express port (x8 1.0)
-two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports with packet classification and filtering
-the L2 cache size increased to 4 MB (8-banks, 16-way associative)
-improved thread scheduling and instruction prefetching to achieve higher single-threaded performance
-two integer ALUs per core instead of one, each one being shared by a group of four threads
-one floating point unit per core, up from just one FPU per CPU
-eight encryption engines (instead of just one in T1), with each supporting DES, 3DES, AES, RC4, SHA1, SHA256, MD5, RSA-2048, ECC, CRC32
-four dual-channel FBDIMM memory controllers
The UltraSPARC T2 is the first major processor whose blueprints are available under a free software license, namely the GPL.

Virtualization
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Like the T1, the T2 also supports the Hyper-Privileged execution mode. The SPARC Hypervisor runs in this mode, and it can partition a T2 system into 64 Logical Domains, each of which can run an operating system instance.

Tape-Out
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On April 12, 2006, Sun announced the tape-out completion of the T2. It also disclosed that under the same power envelope, the T2 will deliver twice the performance of the T1 when running transactional workload.

Announcement webcast Sun announced the UltraSPARC T2 on 7 August 2007. It is now being billed "The world's fastest microprocessor."

Performance Improvement: T2 vs. T1
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-Integer throughput and throughput/watt (>2x improvement)
-Integer single-thread performance (>1.4x improvement)
-Better floating-point throughput (>10x improvement)
-Better floating-point single-thread performance (>5x improvement)

Power consumption
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Peak power consumption can go as high as 123 watts, but the T2 typically consumes 95 watts during nominal system operation. This is up from 72 watts from the T1, but Sun explains that this is due to a higher degree of system integration onto the chip.