Sun is taking a different slant with the launch of its latest UltraSPARC processor, billing it as the world's 'greenest' chip.

Sun played up the efficiency advantages of the new T1 processors, stating that if the entry-level servers sold in the last three years were replaced with T1-powered machines, it would represent the elimination of more than 11 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of 1 million SUV automobiles, according to published reports.

In essence, running the T1 would be the equivalent to planting 1 million acres of trees.

Sun also said the new chip will power its new line of Sun Fire servers, to be released by the end of the year. The T1 chips use the company's "CoolThreads" multi-threading technology to take advantage of capabilities in the Solaris 10 operating system, Sun said.

The new chip is also pretty powerful. Sun's President Jonathan Schwartz wrote in his blog that "Niagara systems take the concept of dual-core processors ... and goes to an absolute extreme - building eight cores, each capable of running four jobs simultaneously, onto a single chip."

Sun also boasts enhanced security, with the chip able to run on-the-fly encryption for secure applications at only a reported 5 percent performance hit, compared with 33 per cent for Intel's low-end Xeon chip and IBM's POWER5+ which runs at only half performance, according to published reports.

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UltraSPARC T1 with "CoolThreads" technology also uses less than 70 watts of power, at a time when most multicore processors including Intel Corp.'s Xeon and IBM's Power processor lines use around 150 watts, according to Sun officials. 

Sun said the new T1 chips, with a processor clock speed of 1.2 GHz, would have eight cores, each with four processing threads, giving the chips the ability to run 32 threads simultaneously running at 9.6GHz for parallel computing and "no waiting."

The T1 is the first microprocessor design to build four memory controllers, transferring data between memory and the processing cores to ensure that data is transmitted into the chip as fast as it can be processed, according to Papadopoulos.

"The chip saves energy, while increasing system throughput and employs Sun's radical CMT processor architecture to keep pace with the multi-threaded application environment of the Internet," the company said in a statement.

The T1 will be available across its mid and high-end server lines before the end of the year. More information is available at the Sun Microsystems website

-- Compiled from wire reports