You seem to be pretty hip to systems technology, chic.
Perhaps you can indulge me with a critique of the
following announcement from Sun (from 1/28/00)??????
SUN MICROSYSTEMS' ULTRASPARCTM III MICROPROCESSOR PUSHES SOLARISTM 8.0 OPERATING
ENVIRONMENT PERFORMANCE AND RELIABILITY TO UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS
Sun's latest 64-bit SPARCTM chip ideally complements the newest release of its Solaris Operating Environment
The UltraSPARC III processor offers significant design innovations in massive multiprocessing,
non-uniform memory access (NUMA), high-bandwidth memory I/O and Scalable Shared Memory (SSM).
The UltraSPARC III processor is built with reliability, availability, scalability and serviceability in mind, all
of which are critical in networked e-commerce environments that demand the ability to handle massive
numbers of data transactions on a continuous basis.
The design features of the Solaris 8.0 Operating Environment allow the operating system to see and
understand hundreds of processes running on multiple UltraSPARC III processors as a single system
image. The CPU, which has full support for NUMA-based systems, is able to handle non-uniform
memory accesses that allow the operating system to take advantage of the CPU's multi-processing and
multi-threading features. The Solaris 8.0 Operating Environment features a many-to-many threading
scheme, which inherently makes it more scalable.
The Solaris 8.0 Operating Environment's 64-bit software environment enables superior execution of
many types of applications, and the CPU capitalizes on this advantage through its built-in memory
controller. This supports high-bandwidth memory access with peak memory and I/O bandwidths of 2.4
Gb/sec, which contributes substantially to optimizing system-level performance.
The UltraSPARC III microprocessor features Scalable Shared Memory (SSM), which provides system
coherency across all processors. With SSM, systems with the UltraSPARC III processor can quickly
expand from just a few processors to hundreds without having to rewrite applications or use extensive
additional circuitry. The Solaris Operating Environment has been designed since its inNEPtion for
scalability. The Solaris Operating Environment is the ideal operating environment to take full advantage of
SSM.
The UltraSPARC III microprocessor represents Sun's next generation of processors with the application
performance, bandwidth and scalability that make it the ideal engine for dot-com businesses. The
UltraSPARC III processor is capable of up to 1,000-way scalability for performance-critical scalable
enterprise computing applications. Sun's newest processor offering is backed by an 11-year Sun
SPARC processor history with more than five years in 64-bit computing, and is enhanced by a roadmap
carrying the processor architecture into 2002 at up to 1.0 GHz.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (Jan. 28, 2000) - Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced that
the technology inherent in its new UltraSPARCTM III microprocessor will make a strong contribution to the
performance of its new SolarisTM 8.0 Operating Environment. The 64-bit UltraSPARC III chip, which will
be available in both 600 MHz and 750 MHz versions, contains numerous enhancements to the basic
SPARCTM architecture that idealize its performance to meet the urgent demands of the Internet-driven
e-business applications. At the same time, the UltraSPARC III processor preserves investments in
application software by delivering full binary compatibility with previous versions of SPARC chips, both
32-bit and 64-bit. |
