Sun's T2000 lets UltraSPARC ride again

The Sun Fire T2000 server with CoolThreads technology attempts to squeeze enormous throughput from a 2U-high, 385-watt server. Powering the T2000 is the long-announced and first-ever eight-core UltraSPARC chip, based on Sun's Reduced Instruction Set Chip UltraSPARC T1 architecture. We found the T2000 unusual (in a good way), with performance in several profiles unmatched for the power and space it consumes.

Surrounding the T1 CPU is an intensely packed server box, with three PCI-E and two PCI-X slots. Added to the profile are twin redundant power supplies (which passed our single supply-failure test) and four Gigabit Ethernet ports. Capped with 32GB of memory (a maximum configuration, with two 16GB DDR sticks in two slots), the T2000 is a powerhouse.

Sun spots

We found some unusual characteristics with the Sun Fire server efficiencies. Some of them, such as requiring the server to be started from a serial cable, are odd and seem like throwbacks to an older era (but also a Sun legacy). Other vendor platforms start easily from bootp, netboot, PxE boot and other Ethernet-based remote boot schemes. Because of the captive Solaris 10/UltraSPARC architecture, a friendlier or faster method of the installation load would have been welcome.

Other applications have been added to the preload configuration of Solaris, including the Java Enterprise System and precompiled versions of Apache and other OSS-focused applications. In testing, we found these largely convenient, although they lacked configuration scripts to fast-start such applications as Apache, TomCat and the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol components needed to start Java Enterprise System. But these are problems related more to Solaris than to the Sun Fire system - it's just that they're indelibly connected. Sun's Advanced Lights Out Manager (ALOM) was initially used to start the machine, which is preloaded with Solaris 10. After an initial configuration, Solaris boots its media, internal or storage-area network (we used only internal), with the Solaris load. ALOM isn't as clever as other operating systems' loading methods or monitor applications, but it was nice to get to HyperVisor, the core controller set. Unfortunately, it was accessible via telnet, which gave us security concerns. We also had to cobble together an RJ-45-to-D-connector serial cable, but Sun says it will include one with the servers soon (our test unit was a preproduction model).

Core competence

The UltraSPARC T1 chip, the engine that runs the Sun Fire T2000, includes eight discrete cores within a single chip housing. Think of each core as an autonomous CPU, although all eight share a single floating-point unit (FPU, or floating-point math processor). The single FPU instance is unusual, but it reduces the heat of the chip stack. The seemingly missing FPUs are offset somewhat, because the UltraSPARC T1 can perform 64-bit integer math internally, unless an application specifies a floating point at compile time. In testing, we got good integer-math performance from the system.