Two high-end chip models from Sun Microsystems look likely to debut later than expected, putting a wrinkle in the server maker's ambitious plan to revamp its processor lines.
David Yen, executive vice president of Sun's microprocessor group, said at a meeting with reporters Tuesday that its UltraSparc IV processor will emerge in the first quarter of 2004, rather than late 2003, as Sun had said earlier. Furthermore, its planned successor, UltraSparc V, could appear in early 2006, instead of late 2005, he added. A one-quarter slip isn't a major problem, especially in the server market where product cycles don't churn as quickly as with PCs, said Kevin Krewell, analyst and senior editor of the Microprocessor Report newsletter.
"Beyond a quarter, you start having an impact," said Krewell, who had expected UltraSparc IV to debut in the fourth quarter of 2003. Sun CEO Scott McNealy said in October 2002 that UltraSparc IV would appear in products in "about a year." Regarding UltraSparc V, Krewell said, "They definitely seem to be hedging a bit. It could be that the reality has set in." UltraSparc IV, built on a process with 130-nanometer features, will fit into the same sockets as the current UltraSparc III but will combine two UltraSparc III processors on a single slice of silicon. The UltraSparc V, built on a more advanced 90-nanometer process, will be a major new design that can execute two batches of instructions at a time and change personality according to the type of work assigned to it.
Both chips will be sold in parallel with new products that employ "chip multithreading" technology. CMT uses numerous small, simple processors for executing many operations simultaneously instead of large chips a single operation very fast. CMT designs, acquired through Sun's purchase of start-up Afara Websystems, will initially be used in lower-end servers that handle Java and Web services transactions. After UltraSparc V, Sun will build the CMT technology into the high-end family as well.
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