Tomorrow's launch of the Sun Niagara 2 processor raises some questions about its Advanced Processor Line (APL).

Niagara 2 (or to use its official name: UltraSparc T2) isn't just a faster version of the Niagara 1 (aka: UltraSparc T1). Sun also added a floating point controller to each processor core as well as an integrated memory controller, encryption technology and integrated network controller.

Sun admitted that Niagara 1 did a pretty poor job in floating point operations. That isn't a big deal, because the chip was designed for highly parallel processes such as web servers. But when users would incidentally feed it a small number crunching task, performance would come to a screeching halt.

07 Aug 2007

Adding floating point controllers solves all that. Early tests on the Specfp_rate2006 benchmark (where fp stands for floating point) turned out a score of 61.5. IBM's Power6 processor scores 58.0, and AMD needs two of its upcoming Barcelona processors to score 69.5.

Ever the boastful bunch, Sun is heralding the world record performance of its processor. But that also puts Sun's own Advanced processor line (APL) into the picture.

APL was considered Sun's insurance premium, just in case Niagara and Rock (another Sun processor) would fail or get delayed. Developed by Fujitsu, Sun agreed to sell systems based on the mainframe-class processor, and started doing so in April.

The cheapest APL-based system costs $50,000. It features 4 dual core, dual threaded processors. It scores 67.2 on the Specfp_rate2006 benchmark.

Sun has yet to reveal pricing for its Niagara 2 based systems, but given that the chip is less expensive than its predecessor, you can safely assume that systems will remain stable. A single processor T1000 starts at $2,995.

Niagara 2 doesn't even targeted at the high performance space. But with performance specs like these, anybody can guess where Sun's upcoming Rock processor is going to go. And that the APL line is doomed.

overview of Niagara 2 chip - Click to enlarge