Sun Microsystems, Inc. has unveiled its Multithreaded 10 Gig E Networking Technology, a network interface specifically designed to accelerate multithreaded application performance by optimizing I/O throughput within environments that use parallel threads. Sun's silicon innovation represents a  multithreaded approach to connecting processors to the network.

Today's application and network environments are increasingly threaded, a trend Sun saw when it built the a multi-threaded operating system (OS): Solaris. While Sun's new Sun Multithreaded 10 Gig E Networking Technology is optimized for chip multi-threading (CMT) environments, it improves network performance for all processors.

Sun is also introducing the first product based on the Sun Multithreaded 10 Gig E Networking Technology, the Sun Multithreaded Networking Card. It is suitable for virtualization because the user can assign the right amount of network bandwidth to all virtualized applications. It also speeds other network-intensive applications and services, such as fast database access and backup, large data warehousing, web infrastructure, cluster computing, and video streaming. Sun plans to incorporate its unique Sun Multithreaded 10 Gig E Networking Technology across all product lines, including in future processors, motherboards, blades and switches. The Niagara 2 processor -- scheduled to be introduced in the second half of this year -- will incorporate the networking technology directly on the processor. The card supports Linux now and will support Windows in the future.

"When we started developing multi-core processors we discovered a fundamental challenge: networking devices were designed to speak with one processor, not multiple cores or threads, which limited overall performance," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Sun's Systems group. "The Sun Multithreaded 10 Gig E Networking Technology solves this problem; it's the first network interface that speaks fluently with today's advanced processors. No one knows more about multithreading than Sun. And with the tight integration between the Solaris OS, our CMT processors, and our new 10Gb Ethernet technology, we can deliver an integrated, optimized network environment with unmatched throughput."