Sun: Rock 16-core server chip on track for fall release

Sporting a new, multi-threaded design, Sun Microsystem's 16-core "Rock" server processor is on track to be released in fall of this year. While John Fowler, executive vice president of systems at Sun declined to provide an exact ship date, he did hint at a September to November timeframe, reports Network World.

What is known at this point is that the cores will operate at 2.1GHz, and the chips will find their way into midrange servers. Increasing the number of processing cores is a logical step, though the challenge of porting existing software to take advantage of the additional cores remains. On this front, Fowler noted that Sun is "working on MySQL to make it scale to higher and higher thread and core counts."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Network World

Related Articles:
AMD unveils Shanghai server chip
Intel unveils six-core server chips
IBM unveils 22nm technology for chips