Afara Websystems
Encyclopedia
Afara Websystems Inc. was a Sunnyvale, California
, USA server company whose goal was to build servers surrounding a custom high-throughput CPU architecture, "developing IP traffic management systems that will bring quality-of-service to the next generation of IP access infrastructure." The word "Afara" means "bridge" in the West African Yoruba language
.
, a Stanford University
professor together with Les Kohn, a microprocessor designer for: Sun Microsystems
UltraSPARC
; Intel i860 and i960; National Semiconductor
Swordfishand Fermi Wang.
Olukotun was talking with people running data centers in 2000 and understood the problem of those centers running out of power and space. Olukotun believed that multiple processors on a chip in conjunction with multi-threading could resolve those problems. kotun searched for venture capital support, on the basis that a new architecture could lead to a 10x performance increase in server processing capabilities. Venture capitalists introduced Olukotun to microprocessor architect Les Kohn, who designed microprocessors for Sun and Intel.
Another meeting with venture capitalists was scheduled on September 11, 2001. The meeting in New York City was interrupted by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, but resumed in a hotel 2 days later. Available capital for funding the server company had vanished, as the economy started to dup into a new recession in 2001.
Rick Hetherington left Sun to create a start-up company. Venture capitalists Sequoia Capital
introduced Hetherington to Olukotun. When Hetherington's startup failed, he returned to Sun. Hetherington wrote memos to Mike Splain, CTO of the Processor group at Sun, encouraging technology acquisition of Afara Websystems. Hetherington became Chief Architect for Horizontal Systems at Sun, which develops and sells servers for data centers and Web systems.
Although SPARC
-based computers systems are almost exclusively deployed with the Solaris Operating System
, Afara instead planned to use Linux
on the SPARC-based processor they developed.
The search for venture capital continued, since creating a server company requires substantial resources, but there was little available during the recession following 9/11. Afara began negotiations with Sun Microsystems, and the acquisition was consummated in July 2002. This new acquisition fell under the umbrella of Fred DeSantis, the vice president of engineering for horizontal systems at Sun.
, a Debian-based Linux operating system. Afara Websystems' former platform direction seemed further validated when Sun hired Ian Murdock
, founder of the Debian distribution, to head operating system platform strategy, and cross-pollinate Solaris with a new OS packaging technology
similar to that of Debian Linux.
The new CPU architecture of Afara Websystems, which became known as "Niagara", had enough merit to cause a competing internal Sun project under DeSantis' organization, called "Honeybee", to be canceled.
Pressure was placed on the computing industry to add cores and threads. While competing microprocessor vendors were designing dual-core chips with two dual-threads per core, the original "Niagara" architecture was a more radical design: an eight core processor with four threads per core.
The new family of SPARC
microprocessors, trademarked by Sun as "CoolThreads", was released with model names of UltraSPARC T1
(2005), UltraSPARC T2
(2007), UltraSPARC T2 Plus (2008) and the further derivative UltraSPARC T3
(2010). While SPARC
is an open instruction set architecture, where vendors build their own processors to an open specification defined by SPARC International, this new family of microprocessors was not only created to the open specification, but its implementation was now free, where people could download the source code, and manufacture them independently.
For web serving loads, Sun had catapulted to become the uncontested fastest single processor on the planet in December 2005, performing 7x faster than the closest Intel server, and has been consistently the highest throughput web server, with the closest competition being 2x-3x slower (socket to socket comparison) as of mid-2009.
Oracle Corporation
announced its intention to acquire Sun in April 2009, a deal which closed in January 2010. By the end of 2010, market competitors started to release similar products with multiple cores, a less radical approach to threading, but with similar performance characteristics. Oracle continued the radical approach of the original Afara SPARC architecture (large numbers of threads per large number of simple cores) with the release of the SPARC T3 processor in September 2010 - the first 16 core commodity central processing unit, yielding another top performance benchmark, but only by a slim margin.
Olokotun returned to Stanford University to head its "Pervasive Parallelism Lab" in 2008, to help shape the future of software, as he did with hardware.
Fermi Wang and Les Kohn founded Ambarella
with a focus on high definition H264 video compression.
Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area...
, USA server company whose goal was to build servers surrounding a custom high-throughput CPU architecture, "developing IP traffic management systems that will bring quality-of-service to the next generation of IP access infrastructure." The word "Afara" means "bridge" in the West African Yoruba language
Yoruba language
Yorùbá is a Niger–Congo language spoken in West Africa by approximately 20 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and in communities in other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas...
.
History
The company was founded by Kunle OlukotunKunle Olukotun
Oyekunle Ayinde Olukotun is a pioneer of multi-core processors, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University and director of the Pervasive Parallelism Laboratory at Stanford....
, a Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
professor together with Les Kohn, a microprocessor designer for: Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
UltraSPARC
UltraSPARC
The UltraSPARC is a microprocessor developed by Sun Microsystems who is now a part of Oracle Corporation and fabricated by Texas Instruments that implements the SPARC V9 instruction set architecture . It was introduced in mid-1995. It was the first microprocessor from Sun Microsystems to implement...
; Intel i860 and i960; National Semiconductor
National Semiconductor
National Semiconductor was an American semiconductor manufacturer, that specialized in analog devices and subsystems,formerly headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA. The products of National Semiconductor included power management circuits, display drivers, audio and operational amplifiers,...
Swordfishand Fermi Wang.
Olukotun was talking with people running data centers in 2000 and understood the problem of those centers running out of power and space. Olukotun believed that multiple processors on a chip in conjunction with multi-threading could resolve those problems. kotun searched for venture capital support, on the basis that a new architecture could lead to a 10x performance increase in server processing capabilities. Venture capitalists introduced Olukotun to microprocessor architect Les Kohn, who designed microprocessors for Sun and Intel.
Another meeting with venture capitalists was scheduled on September 11, 2001. The meeting in New York City was interrupted by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, but resumed in a hotel 2 days later. Available capital for funding the server company had vanished, as the economy started to dup into a new recession in 2001.
Rick Hetherington left Sun to create a start-up company. Venture capitalists Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...
introduced Hetherington to Olukotun. When Hetherington's startup failed, he returned to Sun. Hetherington wrote memos to Mike Splain, CTO of the Processor group at Sun, encouraging technology acquisition of Afara Websystems. Hetherington became Chief Architect for Horizontal Systems at Sun, which develops and sells servers for data centers and Web systems.
Although SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
-based computers systems are almost exclusively deployed with the Solaris Operating System
Solaris Operating System
Solaris is a Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It superseded their earlier SunOS in 1993. Oracle Solaris, as it is now known, has been owned by Oracle Corporation since Oracle's acquisition of Sun in January 2010....
, Afara instead planned to use Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
on the SPARC-based processor they developed.
The search for venture capital continued, since creating a server company requires substantial resources, but there was little available during the recession following 9/11. Afara began negotiations with Sun Microsystems, and the acquisition was consummated in July 2002. This new acquisition fell under the umbrella of Fred DeSantis, the vice president of engineering for horizontal systems at Sun.
Contributions and impact
The project included many technology contributions among Linux, Solaris and SPARC. The Afara CPU used a SPARC port of Debian Linux initially. Debian Linux contributions to Afara Websystem's former CPU architecture continued to grow, including commercial support for UbuntuUbuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
, a Debian-based Linux operating system. Afara Websystems' former platform direction seemed further validated when Sun hired Ian Murdock
Ian Murdock
Ian Murdock is the founder of the Debian distribution and Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company.- Life and career :Murdock was born in Konstanz, Germany....
, founder of the Debian distribution, to head operating system platform strategy, and cross-pollinate Solaris with a new OS packaging technology
Image Packaging System
The Image Packaging System, also known as IPS or pkg, is a cross-platform package management system created by the OpenSolaris community in coordination with Sun Microsystems...
similar to that of Debian Linux.
The new CPU architecture of Afara Websystems, which became known as "Niagara", had enough merit to cause a competing internal Sun project under DeSantis' organization, called "Honeybee", to be canceled.
Pressure was placed on the computing industry to add cores and threads. While competing microprocessor vendors were designing dual-core chips with two dual-threads per core, the original "Niagara" architecture was a more radical design: an eight core processor with four threads per core.
The new family of SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
microprocessors, trademarked by Sun as "CoolThreads", was released with model names of UltraSPARC T1
UltraSPARC T1
|right|262px|UltraSPARC T1 processorSun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor, known until its 14 November 2005 announcement by its development codename "Niagara", is a multithreading, multicore CPU...
(2005), UltraSPARC T2
UltraSPARC T2
Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T2 microprocessor is a multithreading, multi-core CPU. It is a member of the SPARC family, and the successor to the UltraSPARC T1. The chip is sometimes referred to by its codename, Niagara 2...
(2007), UltraSPARC T2 Plus (2008) and the further derivative UltraSPARC T3
UltraSPARC T3
The SPARC T3 microprocessor is a multithreading, multi-core CPU produced by Oracle Corporation...
(2010). While SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
is an open instruction set architecture, where vendors build their own processors to an open specification defined by SPARC International, this new family of microprocessors was not only created to the open specification, but its implementation was now free, where people could download the source code, and manufacture them independently.
For web serving loads, Sun had catapulted to become the uncontested fastest single processor on the planet in December 2005, performing 7x faster than the closest Intel server, and has been consistently the highest throughput web server, with the closest competition being 2x-3x slower (socket to socket comparison) as of mid-2009.
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
announced its intention to acquire Sun in April 2009, a deal which closed in January 2010. By the end of 2010, market competitors started to release similar products with multiple cores, a less radical approach to threading, but with similar performance characteristics. Oracle continued the radical approach of the original Afara SPARC architecture (large numbers of threads per large number of simple cores) with the release of the SPARC T3 processor in September 2010 - the first 16 core commodity central processing unit, yielding another top performance benchmark, but only by a slim margin.
Olokotun returned to Stanford University to head its "Pervasive Parallelism Lab" in 2008, to help shape the future of software, as he did with hardware.
Fermi Wang and Les Kohn founded Ambarella
Ambarella Inc.
Ambarella Inc. is a supplier of processors for professional video compression, digital cameras and IP cameras.- History :Founded in 2004, Ambarella started with professional high definition H.264 Video Encoders for the Broadcast market...
with a focus on high definition H264 video compression.