Slashdot Mirror
New Server Chip Niagara
* * Beatles-Beatles writes "Sun recently announced their latest release in server technology. The 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." With this new processor Sun hopes to get a leg up on the competition. The Niagra chip is being billed as an "eco-friendly" chip because of its low power requirements. From the article: " [...] 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 1 million trees."
Just buy their new processor...it's equivalent to planting a megajillion trees!
Let's go plant some trees then.
It is a pretty safe bet that 1 million trees are way cheaper than Sun technology.
Better link here.
These processors are a step in a different direction. Like the cell processor, they lack features like branch prediction, have small, very simple pipelines, etc. However, that isn't really all that bad, esp. on some tasks where your CPU is mostly just idling waiting for IO to finish anyway. I wonder if these "simple but gets the job done" CPUs will see an even wider market in the future. As the article said, they are cheaper and consume less power than their competitors
low power requirements != low enough for a laptop.
Niagra = 70 watts
G4 = 19 watts
We can add this performance criteria to our system selection process...how many trees are saved. Featuring the Sun chip which is the world's first Megatree (MT) performer.
Why I remember when I was a lad we had Kilotree performers, and we were glad for it!!!
Well, Suns are quite well-known for their decent uptimes!
indeed, you have acid's all over the place.
:)
:(
alcohol is acid, quite a weak one, but still having the effects and reactions as the rest of acids have.
most of the batteries that you throw into your ipod contain acid, so does the battery in your car.
if you let CO2 and water together, they create a nice (and a bit unstable) carbonic acid, and that is basically all over the place.
even your body contains so many acids that i would get a ban on slashdot for even naming all of these.
compared to the acids created by gasoline engines and powerstations in the atmosphere, the electionics production isn't even worth mentioning.
sun is making the right move, more computing power for less watt-per-hour, and if they can spare the energy used during producing too, it's even better (and more profitable for them, since they pay for that). having a 200W P4 screaming under your table just to play solitaire is really wicked from the energetic point of view. so is driving an engine overbloated suv just to get one fat butt from one place to another. regular swedish buses that carry 30 people have the same size of engines as hummers or corvettes, sniffing the word 'wasted' anywhere ?
while this cpu will be nogood for playing doom3, it will be a very good chip for handling many many many threads'n'processes at once and therefor be ideal for running webservers and mailservers and other type of multiple client handling services. way to go sun, i hope amd will do an amd athlon 64 X32 some time soon too
too bad i can't afford this stuff anytime soon
sadly when you are interested in the price of the latest server, you're not rich enough to buy it
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
The whole point of Niagara is to get higher throughput *despite* memory latencies.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.