Sun Microsystems has announced that it will launch a new chip that will deliver more performance but will require less electricity than its competitor chips. Sun hopes that the new chip, called UtraSparc T1, will conquer the market, as the company has lost in the past few years market share because of the higher performing and cheaper Unix servers.

UltraSparc T1 processor has eight computing engines on a single chip and each core can handle up to four tasks (called threads) at once. The company also expects to launch systems based on this chip by the end of 2005.

Server chips from Intel or IBM use about 150 - 200 watts but Sun claims that its new chip uses only 70 watts.

The Unix server market has been recording a growth of 6, 6 percent over the past year, while Sun's share fell from 38 percent to 33 percent.
Also, HP stagnated and IBM had a slight growth.

Over the years, Sun invested massively in developing new servers and server processors. To bring its incomes to life, Sun announced in September a new server technology, called Galaxy, which will be oriented to the low-end market.