c0t0d0s0.org

In Sun's 256-thread African journey begins next month reports about the upcoming servers with the multi-socket enabled Victoria Falls System. While i won´t comment about the facts (albeit much of it isn´t really new), there is an error in the report:

Sun says it has turned the UltraSPARC Tx servers into a $1bn+ business, which is nice enough. As far as we can tell, however, sales of these systems have just replaced sales of Sun's lower-end, regular UltraSPARC gear rather than creating a grand, swelling new market.

That´s not correct, with UltraSPARC Tx our standing at ISPs got much better, i think we got our mindshare back here in the .com business.

Ubuntu was certified by Canonical on some new hardware from Sun. Now you can buy support for Ubuntu from Canonical for the Sun Fire T5220 and 5240 ( both UltraSPARC T2) and the Sun Ultra 24 (Xeon).

We fastly ramping up UltraSPARC T2. Here you see: 12 E10000k, only a little bit short of a quarter Terabit per second networkbandwith, 0,75 Terabyte per second memory bandwith, 96 cores, 192 integer pipelines, 96 crypro accelerators, 96 floating point units, 768 threads, 768 virtual processor. Imagine this processors in some nifty boxes, with a nice silver finish, 1 or 2 rack units high. Consuming only 1200 Watts for the processors. Imagine the load this babies can handle. 5 years ago, you had to fill a complete datacenter for a similar performance. Now it´s a small tray of CPUs (respective 12 or 24 rack units). Simply mind-boggling. But it´s even getting better: In the near future you will have this sheer power in only three machines.

Ich muss ja ganz offen gestehen, das ich die c´t nicht mehr lese. Die Zeitschrift hat vor vielen Jahren irgendwie den letzten Reiz verloren und in Zeiten der weltumspannenden, drahtgestützten Pornoverteilung gibt es als Nebenprodukt viele weitere Webseiten, die viel schneller Informationen liefern. Einer der wenigen Lichtblicke der c´t waren zuweilen die Kolumne "Prozessorgeflüster" von Andreas Stiller, auch wenn dieser sich selten positiv ueber das Haus Sun geäussert hat. Das scheint mit Von Wasserfällen und Ökowellen endlich ein Ende zu haben. Ich zitiere mal meinen Lieblingssatz:

All das ist jetzt Geschichte, denn nun hat Sun mit dem UltraSPARC T2 (Codename Niagara2) wieder ein ganz heißes selbstgestricktes Eisen im solaren Feuer, das zumindest als Einzelchip in der Multithreaded-Welt alle anderen in die Finsternis schickt - wobei man Intels „geschummelten“ Quad-Core mit zwei Dice in einem Gehäuse ruhig mit hinzurechnen darf.

The Unix Guardian is in heavy speculation mode regarding UltraSPARC RK. I won´t comment what´s right and what´s not, but read it yourself

The review at hardware.info starts with a comment which is certainly true: Within all the news about Intel and AMD, you might think that all other companies leaved the processor business. It´s hard to speak agains marketeers who tout the addition of 200 MHz to a cpu as the next revolution of CPU technology. But this only by the way ....
In 8 processor cores on a chip they describe and explain the T1000/T2000 in some depth. A really interesting read. And i like comments like:

No one can deny that Sun has hit a rough patch, but time and time again they don't fail to surprise the market with their well thought-out products. What Apple is for the desktop world, Sun is for networking and server solutions.

Bei James Dickens findet sich ein Bild eines Niagara II Prototypsystems. Aber bitte nicht die Luft anhalten. Das ist wirklich ein sehr früher Prototyp. 2 Halbjahr 2007 ist realistisch.
PS: Wer noch weiter in die Zukunft gucken mag ... die Entwicklung von Niagara 3 hat bereits begonnen.

Ein für Heise-Verhältnisse erstaunlich guter Artikel über Niagara II.

PS: Ich bin uebrigens immer mehr der Meinung, das Heise unerträglich IBM-minded ist. Dieser Artikel feiert wieder Dinge ab, die eigentlich hinterfragenswürdig sind. Das Power Capping schreit doch wieder nach Benchmarketing. Jede Wette, das wir entweder Benchmarks über Power 6 ohne Capping sehen werden, wenn es um Geschwindigkeit geht (dann aber unanständig hohen Verbrauch) oder mit Capping (wenn es darum geht, wie sparsam die Kiste ist), aber nicht mit beidem gleichzeitig. Und die gross herausgestellte Variante der Interchip-Verbindung erinnert mich irgendwie fatal an das , was Sun seit den E10K/E15K-Zeiten macht. Aber das nur am Rande.

Realworldtech offers an analysis about Niagara II in Return of the hydra:

This could put Niagara II at performance parity with the competition, and a lead in performance/watt. Either way, it is encouraging to see that Sun will continue to invest in novel architectures.

You can download the presentation about the Niagara II. You will find it here. Apropos presentation: Yesterday i´ve heard an internal presentation about an upcoming product, that made me almost speechless in some parts. No i won´t tell you which product, but it will be really really cool.
(via Systemhelden)

I looked for a project into the SPEC website today and saw that the T2000 still leads the SPECweb2005 benchmark by roughly 4000 points. And this benchmark was made on the T2000 in November last year. Even the new Woodcrests stopped short of 10000 points and that were already fully blown 4 core systems (maximum for Woodcrest right now). Now keep in consideration that Niagara II already runs in our labs. Interesting times . Well ... Rolf, we should do the power meter gag again next cebit

Normally i don´t quote our own press releases, but this one is really interesting: Sun Fire T1000 Server With CoolThreads(TM) Technology Outperforms All Competing 1U Systems on the Market

Here is another T2000 review. This one has mysql as the focus:

Man our T2000 rocks out for MySQL serving. It requires a bit of tuning to get going, but it our scales our existing Opteron clusters 4-20 to 1.

news.com reports about Colms Benchmarks on the T2000. Most interesting comment from Colm cited in the article:

The Niagara servers only consumed about 220 watts while the Itanium sucked up 400 watts. "We were kind of surprised about the power consumption" on the T2000, he said. "I thought maybe my power meter wasn't working."

When you don´t believe you us or a vendor-supplied tool, when we talk about the need of energy efficent servers, talk with your HVAC guy.

When talking with the HVAC guy before he left he said something interesting. "Don't buy Dell." He's not a server guy, he's not in IT, he's an HVAC guy. "They run hot as hell," he noted.