Sun Microsystems has said it is ahead of schedule for
delivering a chip for its high-end servers that will have eight
processor cores to speed performance.
At the Oracle Openworld Conference in San Francisco last month,
Sun executives said the new Niagara chip could be ready in servers
before the planned "early 2006" target deadline.
Sun confirmed it will sell Niagara with six or even four cores,
as a result of recycling eight-core processors that have gone wrong
in the manufacturing process.
Sun maintains these chips are suitable for four- and six-core
processing, despite the defects.
Niagara is the first of Sun's second generation of processors
based on CMT (chip multi-threading) technology. It is being
designed with eight cores, each running four threads for a total of
32 threads at a time.
Sun said this would deliver several times the throughput of
current processor designs with lower power consumption and less
heat dissipation.
