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Jonathan Schwartz Shows 32-Way UltraSPARC Chip
Megaslow writes "The latest entry in Jonathan Schwartz's blog has pictures of Sun's Project Niagra chip, with 8 cores * 4 threads per core for a 32-way computer on single chip. He also shows what looks to be a test rig reportedly already up and running Solaris 10."
Schwartz's blog may not be representative of the general corporate attitude at Sun, but he comes across as bitter and even hostile. Perhaps he is just a passionate believer in his company's work, but his whiney tone smacks of unprofessionalism. I'm not particularly well versed on the continuing saga that is Sun, but should not product performance be speaking for itself? In any case, if they have achieved something noteworthy with this "32-way" chip, I hope they figure out a way to make it useful. This MPR Paper on the processor may be of interest to some.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Doesn't mean a damn thing unless software is written to take advantage of it. Damn PC developers can't write software to take advantage of HT (with some exceptions, I know), but hopefully this chip's power can be realized fully.
Why is it that people keep stating that you have to write software that targets HT specifically? This is not true. Any multithreaded application will benefit from it. It is up to the OS to present you with the CPUs, real or virtual.
Yes, there are specific issues with handover during tight spinloops et.c., but only people writing locking or timing code should have to deal with those issues. Not your average application programmer.