Fabio Massimo Di Nitto, leader of the Ubuntu Server Team and community SPARC port, has announced that Ubuntu is now available for testing on Sun's new Niagara machines. Fabio thanked kernel hacker David S. Miller for his work on Linux support for Niagara, and a number of Ubuntu developers for their expert help and assistance with integration. A netboot image is available, with a complete CD installer coming soon. If you're lucky enough to have one of these beauties, please test the netboot installer, and send your feedback to the Server Team!
What is Niagara? A massively multi-core, multi-threaded CPU design. While x86 compatible CPUs are only just starting to have dual cores, Niagara CPUs can have up to eight cores, with four threads per core – that's 32 simultaneous running threads. It's a very different kind of beast, so porting it to Linux was a bit of an adventure. Check out Dave's blog for some great war stories.
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