ACADEMIA

Sun Microsystems today announced that Marc Tremblay, a Sun fellow, vice president and Chief Architect has been awarded his 100th technology patent since joining Sun more than fourteen years ago. The most patented Sun employee, his earlier contributions in the area of innovative processor technology have helped establish Sun as a leader in network computing. Tremblay's latest patent for multi-core processor technology has furthered the "throughput computing" model that is challenging the boundaries of Moore's Law and which will power new Sun servers that offer staggering utilization figures. What's more, the systems are powered by microprocessors that use a fraction of the power of virtually anything on the market and which serve as the basis for Sun's Eco-Responsible Computing initiative aimed at lowering power and space requirements for today's enterprise datacenters. The patents expand a growing portfolio in chip-level multiprocessing (CMP), chip-level multithreading (CMT) and speculative multithreading technologies that form the cornerstone of Sun's UltraSPARC processor portfolio and Sun's Throughput Computing strategy. Sun is taking a lead in delivering increased processor performance and reduced power consumption, all within the same physical footprint. "Marc is clearly one of the great processor architects of our era. He has led the expeditionary forces into an area of high-performance throughput computing that is really going to give some grief to our competitors," said Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos. "He's been consistently out in front of the next wave of architecture." The industry is today catching up to the idea, unveiled by Sun six years ago, of using a multicore, multithreaded architecture to solve power-watt issues in processor design. This new patent helps implement multithreading using multiple bit flip flops in today's highly demanding, cost-sensitive computing environments. Technology leveraging this patent will debut in Sun's next-generation Niagara and Rock UltraSPARC processor family. Tremblay's latest breakthrough will help customers with massively parallel web and database environments simultaneously run multiple processes and threads on a low-power server processor that is capable of delivering up to a four-fold improvement in throughput per core. Today, Tremblay serves as the Chief Architect for Sun's SSG business, both creating new SPARC systems-based technology and working closely with customers to better capitalize on the Solaris Operating System and SPARC architecture. "Microprocessor design has been a rewarding pursuit that has enabled me to migrate raw inventions into products that reach millions of people," Tremblay added. "I am fortunate to work for a company that relies on innovation to lead the market place with simply better products."