UltraSPARC IV

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The UltraSPARC IV and follow-up UltraSPARC IV+ are microprocessors manufactured by Sun Microsystems. They are the fourth and fifth generation of the UltraSPARC microprocessor family, implementing the 64-bit SPARC V9 instruction architecure.

The UltraSPARC IV was the first multi-core SPARC processor, and was designed to be compatible with the previous UltraSPARC III processor line: internally, it implements two UltraSPARC III cores, and its physical packaging is identical to the UltraSPARC III with the exception of one pin.[1] The UltraSPARC IV contains 66 million transistors. Servers using the UltraSPARC IV were released in September 2004.

The UltraSPARC IV+ is also a dual-core design, featuring enhanced processor cores and an on-chip L2 cache. It is fabricated on a 90 nanometer manufacturing process. The initial speed of the UltraSPARC IV+ was 1.5 GHz, later increased to 2.1 GHz. It contains 295 million transistors.[2] The UltraSPARC IV+ was released in Sun servers in September 2005.

Sun Fire V490, V890, E2900, E4900, E6900, E20K and E25K systems all use UltraSPARC IV and IV+ processors. These systems range from four processor sockets to 72 processor sockets.

Servers powered by the UltraSPARC IV+ processor were well received, allowing Sun to regain revenue lead in the Unix server market in 2006.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ UltraSPARC IV Processor Architecture Overview. Sun Microsystems (February 2004). Retrieved on 2007-12-05.
  2. ^ UltraSPARC IV+. Sun Web site. Sun Microsystems. Retrieved on 2007-12-05.
  3. ^ Analyst Firm Shows Sun Gaining Market Share in Worldwide Server Market. Sun Microsystems (May 24, 2006). Retrieved on 2007-12-05.

[edit] External links

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