New Sun Silicon Delivers Multi-Threaded 10 Gig E

Sun Microsystems is introducing a new network interface card (NIC) today designed to improve multi-threaded application performance by supporting maximum input/output throughput in environments that use parallel threads.

Describing the new silicon technology that provides the basis for the NIC as a "revolutionary approach to connecting processors to the network," Sun says that while the new multi-threaded 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology is designed for chip multi-threading (CMT) environments, it actually accelerates network performance for all processors.The vendor says the NIC is particularly appropriate for use with virtualized applications where administrators need to provision specific amounts of bandwidth for particular applications. Sun claims the card, which now works with Linux and will interoperate Windows in the future, also supports other bandwidth-intensive applications and services, such as database access and backup, data warehousing, clustered computing applications, video streaming, and Web infrastructure services.

Sun says it plans to integrate the 10 GbE technology across its product lines, including future processors, motherboards, server blades, and switches. The vendor will use the technology in its forthcoming Niagara2 processor, due later this year.

The multi-threaded networking card, which is available now and priced from just under $500 per port, promises up to 10 times the throughput at one-third the cost per gigabit of 1GbE cards.

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