An overview of Sun UltraSPARCTM based high performance computing systems

Sun has a diverse workstation and server product line suitable for high performance technical computing. In this talk we will present an overview of the architectural features of UltraSPARC(tm) processor based product families. The product families are built around three series of UltraSPARC processors, namely, S, I and E series. The S series processors (UltraSPARC I, II and III) are designed for highest performance. These are used in high end workstations and low, mid and high range server class systems. The I series processors (UltraSPARC IIi) are optimized for price/performance ratio. This has been achieved by a high level of system integration. The E series processors (UltraSPARC IIe) are targeted towards embedded applications and optimized to minimize energy consumption requirements. Supporting the processor implementations is a family of memory interconnects. We will describe the design characteristics of the Ultra Port Architecture(tm), Gigaplane(tm), Gigaplane XB(tm) and the Sun Fireplane(tm) system interconnects, respectively. Representative results of benchmarks such as SPEC CPU2000, Imbench and STREAM will be presented for various systems and discussed in the context of scalable parallel computing applications