Sun puts 16 cores on its 'Rock' chip

SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Microsystems, already an aggressive advocate of multicore processing, will try to stay a step ahead of the game by putting 16 cores in its high-end Rock chip.

With overheating capping chip speeds, chipmakers have been scrambling to improve performance instead by packing multiple processing engines onto a single slice of silicon. Sun got an early start with its UltraSparc T1 "Niagara" processor, which has eight cores, and it looks like Rock will keep the company a step ahead of the competition.

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