Sun and Fujitsu release quad core SPARC64 VII - Servers to come

By Dave Murray @ Monday, July 14, 2008 9:33 AM

Section - PCs/Chips

Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu have released a quad-core version of the SPARC64 chip and some servers that will be based around it.

The SPARC64 VII processor will be made by Fujitsu, and Sun will release M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 enterprise servers that use the new quad-core chip. According to a press release, the processor provides 80 per cent better performance and uses 44 per cent less power than the previous SPARC64. The SPARC64 VII uses the 65-nanometer process, while the SPARC64 VI chip used a 90nm node.

Multicore systems are no mystery to Sun - its UltraSPARC T2 processor has up to eight cores on a single piece of silicon.

The new servers will be targeted at high-availability, mission-critical enterprise applications, including large-scale databases, data warehousing, and enterprise resource planning.

Sun points out that its current SPARC Enterprise servers can be upgraded to the new chips by swapping out older processors with the new SPARC64 VII chips. The old and the new chips can be used together. X