Author: David Poarch
This work presents and discusses the Rock—a multithreading, multi-core, and the newest SPARC microprocessor under development by Sun Microsystems. In addition to an overview of the 16-core processor and its architecture, multithreading technologies such as hardware scouting, thread-level speculation, transactional memory, and thread-level parallelism, as well as the implementation of these unconventional features, are investigated. Designed as a multi-threaded processor that allows multiple processes to perform calculations in parallel, the Rock is ideal for high-end computer systems such as web and application servers, which demand massive multimedia and multitasking operations. Incorporating 16 cores arranged in four clusters with shared resources and delivering full parallel execution of multiple software threads implemented by efficient multithreading technologies, the Rock enables area-efficient, power-efficient, and low-frequency operation with relatively low impact on core performance. With such resourceful and sophisticated capabilities, Sun’s Rock processor directly competes with and poses distinct advantages over other multi-core processors from competitors such as Intel, IBM, and AMD.

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