UltraSPARC T3

Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T3 microprocessor (codenamed "Rainbow Falls", also known as UltraSPARC KT) is a future multithreading, multi-core CPU. It is a member of the SPARC family, and the successor to the UltraSPARC T2.

In October 2006, Sun disclosed that Niagara 3 will be built with a 45 nm process. An online IT publication, The Register incorrectly reported in June 2008 that the microprocessor will have 16 cores, each with 16 threads, but published a roadmap in September 2009 showing 8 threads per core. During the Hot Chips 21 conference Sun revealed the chip has a total of 16 cores and 128 threads. According to the ISSCC 2010 presentation:



"A 16-core SPARC SoC processor enables up to 512 threads in a 4-way glueless system to maximize throughput. The 6MB L2 cache of 461GB/s and the 308-pin SerDes I/O of 2.4Tb/s support the required bandwidth. Six clock and four voltage domains, as well as power management and circuit techniques, optimize performance, power, variability and yield trade-offs across the 377mm2 die."

Upcoming support for the UltraSPARC T3 and it's official naming was confirmed on July 16th 2010 when the ARCBot under Twitter noted unpublished PSARC/2010/274 which revealed a new "-xtarget value for UltraSPARC T3" being included in OpenSolaris.

Features


* 16 CPU Cores
* 8 Hardware Threads per Core
* 6 MB Level 2 Cache
* 2 Embedded Coherency Controllers
* 6 Coherence Links
* 14 unidirectional lanes per Coherence Link
* SMP to 4 sockets without glue circuitry
* 4 DDR3 Memory Channels
* Embedded PCIe I/O Interfaces
* 16 Embedded Crypto Acceleration Engines
* 2 Embedded 1GigE/10GigE Interfaces
* 2.4Tb/s aggregate throughput per socket