Rule-Changing Chip Multithreading (Cmt) Technology - Sun Microsystems SPARC Enterprise T5120 User Manual

The Evolution of Chip Multithreading (CMT)
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• Driving Datacenter Virtualization and Eco-Efficiency
Coincident with the need to scale services, many datacenters are recognizing the
advantages of deploying fewer standard platforms to run a mixture of commercial
and technical workloads. This process involves consolidating under-utilized and
often sprawling server infrastructures with effective virtualization solutions that
serve to enhance business agility, improve disaster recovery, and reduce operating
costs. This focus can help reduce energy costs and break through datacenter
capacity constraints by improving the amount of realized performance for each
watt of power the datacenter consumes.
Eco-efficiency provides tangible benefits, improving ecology by reducing carbon
footprint to meet legislative and corporate social responsibility goals, even as it
improves the economy of the organization paying the electric bill. As systems are
consolidated onto more dense and capable computing infrastructure, demand for
datacenter real estate is also reduced. With careful planning, this approach can
also improve service uptime and reliability by reducing hardware failures resulting
from excess heat load. Servers with high levels of standard reliability, availability,
and serviceability (RAS) are now considered a requirement.
• Securing the Enterprise at Speed:
Organizations are increasingly interested in securing all communications with
their customers and partners. Given the risks, end-to-end encryption is essential in
order to inspire confidence in security and confidentiality. Encryption is also
increasingly important for storage, helping to secure stored and archived data
even as it provides a mechanism to detect tampering and data corruption.
Unfortunately, the computational costs of increased encryption can increase the
burden on already over-taxed computational resources. Security also needs to take
place at line speed, without introducing bottlenecks that can impact the customer
experience or slow transactions. Solutions must help to ensure security and
privacy for clients and bring business compliance for the organization, all without
impacting performance or increasing costs.

Rule-Changing Chip Multithreading (CMT) Technology

Addressing these challenges has outstripped the capabilities of traditional processors
and systems, and required a fundamentally new approach.
Moore's Law, and the Diminishing Returns of Traditional Processor
Design
The oft-quoted tenant of Moore's Law states that the number of transistors that will fit
in a square inch of integrated circuitry will approximately double every two years. For
over three decades the pace of Moore's law has held, driving processor performance to
new heights. Processor manufacturers have long exploited these gains in chip real
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