Niagara II About to Take Center Stage

Now the media outlets are starting to confirm that Sun is about to announce the Niagara 2 or UltraSparc-T2 processor. According to InformationWeek, which has slides from Sun customer presentation on the Niagara 2, the processor will have the features I've mentioned before on my blog.

One of the interesting things in the article beyond some of the major details on the Niagara 2 was the mention of server growth for Sun in the last quarter. Apparently, high-end server sales is up 225% and 39% for the rest of the product line. Thats a lot of growth for Sun and shows that there is strong demand for high-end servers.

I've always found it interesting when people make claims that no one is buying large servers anymore. Yet, when I go to large data centers, it's not uncommon to see Sun Fire 6900's, E15k's, or E25k's. Of course I see more v240's - v890's. But most of those are web or application servers. The bigger iron is primarily used for databases and data warehousing. Of course with the Niagara line and the future ROCK servers, I expect things to get smaller and more dense. Already with the APL line, there is a reduction in the number of rack units required to get the same amount of compute power. I can only assume this will continue on.

Another interesting point in the article was the difference between commodity processors from Intel or AMD and the processors from the Sun, IBM, etc. As multi-core designs become common place, there will be a huge shift in how applications and OS's are designed. I've already seen cases where single threaded web applications that are redesigned to be multi-threaded perform better on processors like the UltraSparc-T1 than on an Opteron. Both Intel and AMD have to catch up to Sun on the hardware front. But it'll also take expertise in programming and choosing the right language to take advantage of these advances. Luckily, Sun has been on this path for a long time when you look at Solaris and the SMP servers they have built over the years. Sun has even provided the programming tools to help out, such as Sun Studio. The Niagara and ROCK servers are an extension of this and helps to position Sun for the future.

While it's doubtful that desktop applications like MS Office will take advantage of multi-core or CMT designs, it's clear that enterprise applications will take full advantage. In many cases, applications like Oracle or Weblogic already take advantage. But this will change over time. A good example is how PhotoShop for the Mac took advantage of dual cpu's ahead of many applications on the Mac. There has to be demand from the end-users for applications to perform better on multi-core desktops. With multi-media requirements exploding for music, video, games, and fancy desktops, it's only a matter of time.

Hopefully with the release of the Niagara 2 products, the price on a T1000 will come down enough for me to buy a used one for home. Then again, it may be a few years before they are priced cheap enough on Ebay:(