Introduction to Throughput Computing

P10 Sun’s Unique Ability to Deliver © 2003 Sun Microsystems
compute jobs on an all-Sun infrastructure of more than 7500 UltraSPARC processor nodes housed
in over 2000 Sun servers and workstations. These jobs consume more than 134,000 hours of
computing time daily—the equivalent of 15 years of single-processor computing. This processing
power enables Sun’s design team to complete the trillions of essential calculations needed to
simulate the operations of new processor designs that now integrate hundreds of millions of
transistors.
In addition to helping Sun bring new processors to market, the ranch infrastructure acts as a
proving ground for advanced grid and virtualized N1-style computing technologies. By leveraging
these sophisticated resource management technologies, the ranches achieve a sustained compute
utilization rate of 98 percent 24 hours a day. The resulting efficiencies and time savings is one of
the main reasons that Sun can maintain a fast pace of new product introductions at sustainable
levels of R&D spending.
Furthermore, Sun’s long-standing chip-making technology partnership with Texas
Instruments enables Sun to focus on its core competency of innovative design engineering while
leveraging the world-class process and fabrication technologies TI has to offer. For the past 14
years, Sun has partnered with Texas Instruments to fabricate Sun processors, enabling Sun to
deliver cutting-edge processors without incurring the full costs and risks of building and
maintaining its own processor fab.
Sun’s compute ranches and unique manufacturing relationship with Texas Instruments
enable Sun to be much more nimble in designing processors than its competitors. Sun will take
advantage of these processor design strengths to develop its upcoming CMT processors.