Sun's Niagara falls neatly into multithreaded place

Posted on Wednesday, November 03 2004 @ 11:59 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Sun is going to be the first out of the gate with a new architecture that everyone will be jumping aboard soon, the massively multithreaded chip. Niagara from Sun Microsystems is a family of CPUs that blurs the lines between chip, CPU and thread, something that could have a profound effect on how software is written and used. It could succeed spectacularly or it could flop, but seeing as how Intel is doing much the same thing with Tukwila, I would bet on this succeeding.

I had a chat with Sun Fellow and Vice President Marc Tremblay about the upcoming chip, what they are, what they do, and where they will fit in. There are a lot of changes embodied in this chip, and Sun refers to what it represents as disruptive threads, in the sense of what it will do to the marketplace, not to your software. Disruptive is a good thing, especially when you are talking about the price/performance curve.

Read more at The Inquirer


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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