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Why not SPARC?

but then there is the fact that most RISC's use same registers for both FPU and integer

With the minor exceptions of Alpha, PA-RISC 1.x and 2.0, POWER/PowerPC/Power ISA, MIPS, and SPARC.

First of all, at this point, it is misguided to talk about x86 as an architecture; there is generally little or no architectural overlap between two x86 processors that are a few generation apart. x86 is an instruction set, or even more correct, a family of instruction sets.

I don't disagree with this technically, but in common usage the term "architecture" has become to, depending on context, mean just the externally visible characteristics of a processor family independent of internal implementations. Mostly this is the instruction set (including memory model, side effects, undefined ops/fields -- all the behavior that is externally visible to software and, to some extent, interfacing hardware at an architectural level). It bugs me too, but I've come to accept it - terms morph sometimes becoming ambiguous w/o context.

For example, if one looks at the document titled The SPARC Architecture Manual Version 9 (© 1994), one finds a description of the instruction set and a little about hardware issues like MMU:Processor interactions. About the only hint of "architecture" as you (and I used to before I gave up worrying about it) consider it appears in notes like "IMPL. DEP. #: xxx" and these only implicitly acknowledge that underlying implementations may not all be the same.

Apparently, it still is - Oracle didn't do to them what they did w/ OpenSolaris

Vigorous defense of one's trademark does not demand that one pursue ridiculous or even questionable claims. All it means is that you can't knowingly allow violation of your trademark, then attempt to enforce it later. Where a case appears legally questionable, or outright stupid, there is absolutely no duty to pursue it.

Pardon me for saying so, but if a case is legally questionable then that's exactly the reason to pursue it. The question gets answered by the courts.

Let's take a look at SparkFun's defense against Sparc's claims:

• phonetically identical : Yes, English phonics work like that. However, 'spark' is not the dominant portion of our name. No one calls us 'SPARK'. We're always called 'Sparkfun' (even though we prefer 'SparkFun').
  ANALYSIS: Sorry, but that's pretty thin. If the name was SparcFun, it would still be "phonetically identical" (which is the actual claim). I think everybody agrees SparcFun would likely be infringing. So why not SparkFun since the two sound exactly the same? The claim here is "phonetically identical," as in "sounds alike," and they do sound alike. And this isn't Sparc's whole claim, it's one part of a claim, so let's move on to the next part..
• visually similar : No one calls us Spark. Have a look at our logo. We don't separate spark from fun. We are, and are known as 'SparkFun' as shown by our trademark.
  ANALYSIS: Pretty much same as above. Part of Sparc's claims is that the mark could be mistaken for "one of SI's many Sparc-derived brands." Sparc is saying that if the market has heard of SparcTop, Sparc Shop, SparcStation, SparcSummit, SparcPhone, SparcWorks, etc -- all of which are Sparc Inc. trademarks -- then there could be some confusion with SparkFun. Sounds reasonable to me. Also, on the "visually similar" part, SparkFun's logo seems to use the same red color as Sparc Inc.'s logo. Check out Sparc's color guidelines for its trademark licensees. They specify the exact Pantone red you should use. They even go so far as to state you should never use orange and green -- why, I have no idea, but I'm sure it has something to do with trademarks.
• used in connection with identical goods: No. We don't sell any product related to SPARC architecture.
  ANALYSIS: Now they're just playing stupid. Sparc explains in its letter exactly what is meant by "identical goods" as defined by the terms of trademark law: "computer hardware, including integrated circuits and circuit boards." In case you don't know how trademark works, you register a trademark under a certain category. Sparc probably does not have a trademark in the area of soft drinks, for example. But it does have a trademark in the area of integrated circuits and circuit boards, which is exactly what SparkFun sells.
• confusion is likely to occur among the relevant purchasing group: I have no doubt that some of our customers purchase SPARC based servers. But we have not received an email or phone call from anyone on our website looking for the 'Server' product category.
  ANALYSIS: And now they just sound like kids in a schoolyard. Nobody calls up Sparc Inc. looking for servers, either, and this has nothing to do with Sparc's trademark claim.

And just to add weight to Sparc's case, the C&D letter specifically points out that Sparc Inc. has owned the primary trademark since 1989. SparkFun was founded in 2003 as a Web site. For all we know, it was running on a SparcServer. I think SparkFun is going to have a difficult time proving that it wasn't aware of the Sparc trademark, even if it insists that its own mark doesn't resemble Sparc's at all.

In summary, I'm sorry, but I think Sparc Inc. has a pretty solid claim here. It's fine to post a response on SparkFun's Web site, but if I w

Vigorous defense of one's trademark does not demand that one pursue ridiculous or even questionable claims. All it means is that you can't knowingly allow violation of your trademark, then attempt to enforce it later. Where a case appears legally questionable, or outright stupid, there is absolutely no duty to pursue it.

Pardon me for saying so, but if a case is legally questionable then that's exactly the reason to pursue it. The question gets answered by the courts.

Let's take a look at SparkFun's defense against Sparc's claims:

• phonetically identical : Yes, English phonics work like that. However, 'spark' is not the dominant portion of our name. No one calls us 'SPARK'. We're always called 'Sparkfun' (even though we prefer 'SparkFun').
  ANALYSIS: Sorry, but that's pretty thin. If the name was SparcFun, it would still be "phonetically identical" (which is the actual claim). I think everybody agrees SparcFun would likely be infringing. So why not SparkFun since the two sound exactly the same? The claim here is "phonetically identical," as in "sounds alike," and they do sound alike. And this isn't Sparc's whole claim, it's one part of a claim, so let's move on to the next part..
• visually similar : No one calls us Spark. Have a look at our logo. We don't separate spark from fun. We are, and are known as 'SparkFun' as shown by our trademark.
  ANALYSIS: Pretty much same as above. Part of Sparc's claims is that the mark could be mistaken for "one of SI's many Sparc-derived brands." Sparc is saying that if the market has heard of SparcTop, Sparc Shop, SparcStation, SparcSummit, SparcPhone, SparcWorks, etc -- all of which are Sparc Inc. trademarks -- then there could be some confusion with SparkFun. Sounds reasonable to me. Also, on the "visually similar" part, SparkFun's logo seems to use the same red color as Sparc Inc.'s logo. Check out Sparc's color guidelines for its trademark licensees. They specify the exact Pantone red you should use. They even go so far as to state you should never use orange and green -- why, I have no idea, but I'm sure it has something to do with trademarks.
• used in connection with identical goods: No. We don't sell any product related to SPARC architecture.
  ANALYSIS: Now they're just playing stupid. Sparc explains in its letter exactly what is meant by "identical goods" as defined by the terms of trademark law: "computer hardware, including integrated circuits and circuit boards." In case you don't know how trademark works, you register a trademark under a certain category. Sparc probably does not have a trademark in the area of soft drinks, for example. But it does have a trademark in the area of integrated circuits and circuit boards, which is exactly what SparkFun sells.
• confusion is likely to occur among the relevant purchasing group: I have no doubt that some of our customers purchase SPARC based servers. But we have not received an email or phone call from anyone on our website looking for the 'Server' product category.
  ANALYSIS: And now they just sound like kids in a schoolyard. Nobody calls up Sparc Inc. looking for servers, either, and this has nothing to do with Sparc's trademark claim.

And just to add weight to Sparc's case, the C&D letter specifically points out that Sparc Inc. has owned the primary trademark since 1989. SparkFun was founded in 2003 as a Web site. For all we know, it was running on a SparcServer. I think SparkFun is going to have a difficult time proving that it wasn't aware of the Sparc trademark, even if it insists that its own mark doesn't resemble Sparc's at all.

In summary, I'm sorry, but I think Sparc Inc. has a pretty solid claim here. It's fine to post a response on SparkFun's Web site, but if I w

I visit http://sparkfun.com/ and I find a company that sells electronic parts and kits and things of that nature. I attempt to visit http://sparc.org/ and I get gigantic warnings from both Google and from Mozilla/Firefox telling me it's an "attack site" and it may "harm my computer". I see no basis for their lawsuit; Sparkfun obviously sells electronics, sparc.org obviously creates malware. Case closed.

Firefox warning; apparently www.sparc.org/index.html has been reported as an attack site. Nice.

That's very funny. I downloaded a copy of the index page like so:

# wget http://www.sparc.org/index.html

I then opened it in a text editor. Maybe I am missing something, so I refuse to positively say that there is no malware and no "attack" in it. What I can say is that I was unable to find anything remotely suspicious. I suppose it's possible that there are advertisements on the index page and that those are the source of any malware, because I would not see those when looking at the index.html text. But in my mind, I'd like to see a lot more substantiation of any claims about maliciousness.

False positives are not the only reason I disagree with this kind of blacklisting. I wish all of the effort that has ever been invested in malware filters, antispyware products, and blacklists were instead put towards securing Windows and educating its users. Then we might have something better than a useless arms race..

Sun named their product line after a natural phenomenon, a spark, and is now going after any one using the natural phenomenon's namesake?

No. Sun Microsystems is a member of Sparc International, along with a slew of other companies (TI, Hitachi, Fujitsu, etc, etc -- http://www.sparc.org/members.html), but Sparc International != Sun.

Sun and Red Hat ought to get together and promote sparc: open hardware for open systems. Being able to run RHEL and/or OpenSolaris is a good selling point, but it should also be possible to do both at the same time. You should be able to set up multiple containers each running either RHEL or OpenSolaris.

(I myself wouldn't say no to a low-end Sun or Fujitsu sparc workstation, if offered.)

Further, one big source of resistance to adoption of their chips is the concern for what happens if Sun abandons the line, stops developing it, goes belly-up, or closes up again.

Closes up again? The SPARC architecture is and pretty much always has been an open standard. Anyone can implement it, and several other companies have, including TI, Cypress Semiconductor, and Fujitsu. The architecture is controlled by a separate organization, which is a non-profit: SPARC International.

Now this only applies to the architecture, not the design of the chips that implement the architecture. Nevertheless, if your concern is to be able to run SPARC code, you don't need to rely on Sun to do that.

You're using Microsoft as an example for anything? Bad! Bad! No cookie for you.

Firstly, Microsoft never had a proprietary hardware lock-in that Apple has always had.

Secondly, Linux runs fairly well on x86, PowerPC, and SPARC platforms (there are others), and definitely isn't locked into a brand of computing equipment to work.

Thirdly, Sun did exactly what Apple should do, given it's a little harder due to the number of peripherals that the consumer demands on the Apple platform and not so much on the Sun side. But instead of keeping Solaris on SPARC only (which isn't proprietary, just no other (real) SPARC manufacturers http://www.sparc.org/), they opened it up and put it out there on the x86 platform. Who knows where it will go from there, but so far it's been a success.

How is this something new? SPARC has always been, more or less, an open processor design.

Go to http://sparc.org to see.

SPARC already has multiple manufacturers building independent but compatible chips. SPARC was designed to be an open, multi-sourced processor design. Scalable PRocessor ARChitecture.

As far as I know, there is not a single "Sun Fire" system ever made that didn't use bone-standard SCSI disks manufactured by IBM, Seagate, Fujitsu, or Hitatchi, etc (with 'proprietary' drive rails). That being said, the Sun-branded disks on their website are ridiculously overpriced, but there has never been anything technological to stop you from using whatever disks you please.

I really hate this "proprietary" phrase getting thrown around with regard to Sun. Forget that they're using AMD CPUs now (the whole point of TFA), and please go ahead and tell me how SPARC is proprietary and Intel isn't. I'd love to hear this. Not to mention that Sun has probably done more for open standards and protocols over the years than any other single company that comes readily to mind. Open source is not necessary for open standards, which really, is what matters far more to me. But, even so, Solaris is now open source as well. But please don't let over 20 years of history and assorted facts stop /. folks from crying "proprietary!" every time Sun is mentioned in the news.

If you don't think SPARC is a poorly designed processor you need to wake up from your trendy x86 bashing and smell some benchmarks done in the last 5 years. SPARC hasn't been competetive for a long time. The only reason it's still around is because of Solaris and the fact that it scales well when you want to use a very large number of processors. But with Sun investing in Opteron technology they will likely stop making SPARCs soon.

I'm not sure that they ever did develop SPARC processors completely? I know that TI did/does sparc processors for Sun. And I believe that now (or the near future) that Fujitsu will be Sun's primary CPU vendor

They've already stopped developing future SPARC designs.

Also, isn't the SPARC CPU is a pretty open CPU

http://www.sparc.org/

compared to the intel/amd CPU's??

And there are quite a few companies that make SPARC based systems other than just Sun like

Tadpole
RDI
Fujitsu
Rave
NIS - I am typing this on a NIS UltraSparc II system
Aries


I know that there are others but that is all I can think of

"run on SPARC, which is a poorly designed processor"

I know this is Slashdot, but do you have anything to back this up. Everything I have read about SPARC seems to suggest that it is a very well designed processor although manufacturers seem to have failed to push uit to the MHz that Intel and AMD have achieved.

You also overlook the fact that SPARC is not owned by an individual manufacturer but by the SPARC Consortium. This means that the AMD / Intel issues described in this thread simply could not exist as everything is genuine SPARC. I recently bought some Fujitsu PrimePower SPARC boxes in preference to SUN boxes, they are certified by SUN to run all versions of Solaris and indeed they are currently running Solaris 9 like a dream. In addition they are outperforming some other manufacturers XEON boxes we also use to run JAVA software on an out and out price comparison basis and have had 100% relaibility of 16 months, not something I can say for every Linux / XEON box I have use (based on a very small sample size of 3 PrimePower to 5 XXX Vendor XEON, so take with a pinch of salt).

SUN's roadmap for SPARC continues to look very good and their low end boxes compete very favourable with even their own AMD based boxes. So I remain confused as to what's not to like, I will certainly be bying them again (especially with Solaris 10 shaping up very nicely).

Also consider the size of their contributions to those projects and how important stuff like OpenOffice.org is. Then you have Sun's history of supporting open standards and publishing a lot of their research like their Sparc cpu which allowed others to build sparc cpu's and systems (while IBM was trying to close off their pc architecture with things like MBus to prevent OEMs), their work with xml including sponsoring the working group that created it, publishing reasearch like on The Slab Allocator which was used in Linux, even OpenSolaris has been helpful to Linux Kernel developers, and there's more I don't have the time or energy to search for.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves in IT journalism. How Intel CPUs are always "industry standard," and everything else is "proprietary." Tell me again how x86 isn't proprietary? SPARC is actually somewhat open, as described here. Now, I'm not saying it's open like GPL software is open, but there's an IEEE standard for the SPARC instruction set, and anyone can license the SPARC specification. There have always been two distinct vendors (Sun and Fujitsu) selling different but compatible SPARC implementations. Even after the APL goes into effect, I believe each vendor will still have SPARC chips not covered by that agreement (each vendor's low-end line).

Now, x86 has both Intel and AMD making compatible chips, but they actually have a license agreement. AMD pays Intel royalties, and it's even rumored that Intel has the right under that agreement to cap AMD's production volume. To me, it starts looking like AMD is a pet Intel keeps around to be able to say, "but we're not a monopoly, look at AMD!" You only need to look at Microsoft's legal history to see why that'd be a smart move.

"Commodity" is the other term consistently abused in discussions like this. When people say Intel CPUs are "commodity" and "industry-standard", what they mean to say is that they are "cheap" and that there are "lots of them."

It is in fact the x86 that is unique in that multiple companies provide each part of the computer in an open architecture.

Actuall that is incorrect. With the SPARC architecture you can get systems from companies other than Sun (e.g., Fujitsu). It is actually possible to license SPARC and UltraSPARC and start your own CPU company.

SPARC is not actually controlled by Sun, but by a separate organization: http://www.sparc.org/

There's also the fact that Sun uses USB, PCI, FireWire, Ethernet, and HyperTransport. All open architectures. Heck, even Open Firemware (the "BIOS") is a IEEE standard (1284) that can run on SPARC, PowerPC (Apple), and x86.

I would say that out of the companies that you listed Sun is one of the most "open".

I once read in an older post on /. (sorry can't find it) that the European Space Agency has implemented a hardened Sparc implementation based on the standard. Sad that the article fails to mention it completely. Here is an interesting link though. I heard those puppies can work under radiation levels that would fry a normal UltraSparc. If anyone has more information that would be very nice.

[rant]And what's more sad is that we are getting to the point where the x86 has become almost a monoculture, which is way very bad. Apparently there are lots of folks who think that the only processors around are named "pentiums". [/rant]

There already exist GPL CPUs. Have a look at the SPARC web page. http://www.sparc.org/productspg/gaislerLeon.htm

At first this flag was disabled by default because it was not comply with SPARCv8 ABI so some (mainly bad coded) applications that relied on the execution of code inside the stack could not run as expected. Sun collaborated with its huge community of developers to addresssome collateral effects and once resolved Sun published the new SPARCv9 ABI reference guide in which the stack is no longer mapped as executable.
Currently 64-bit Solaris applications running on SPARC don't need to worry about exploits that rely on malicious code execution due to stack overflows.

Seems IBM is embracing open standards

It also seems that IBM is a few years late in that respect. (See: IEEE Standard 1754-1994)

If they succeed it doesn't bode well for the x86 architecture, which seems to be a victim of it's own success. They seem to be trapped into just adding faster clocks instead of changing the architecture.

As much as I can't believe I'm defending the Intel architecture, Intel *has* been modifying their chip design. Out of order instructions, Superscalar execution, instruction pipelining, branch prediction, etc. are all in the current classes of Pentium processors. There are two reasons, however, that these don't affect Intel processors as much as other architectures:

1. The awful Intel instruction set was created as part of a quick "stop-gap" product called the 8088 (and later the 8086). Intel had planned to redesign the thing, but got trapped when IBM used it for PCs. This has led to more crappy instructions being bolted on for 32 bit support. This instruction set has made it somewhat difficult for Intel to use traditional performance enhancements. (e.g. A common block of instructions don't quite fit the superscalar block, resulting in lost performance gains.)

2. Intel tunes their chips for video games. Sorry folks, you've all been asking for single threaded performance. Well, single threaded performance is what you've got. The Intel chips will outdo every other architecture on Quake III. Just start praying that your servers don't need to multitask more than 20 or so concurrent threads.

The SPARC is already an open architecture processor. It's been that way for years. Sun was the big player behind it, and certainly the best known, but the SPARC design is the closest thing there is to an "open source cpu." There's even a non-Sun organization (SPARC International) they spun off to act as a steward for the standard.

SPARC processors are made by Sun, Texas Instruments, Hitachi, and others. There's a history of all the chips made on their web site.

Dunno why they're too blind to see that this would be as good an idea for Java.

You'd expect someone reviewing a computer to have at least a vague clue about that computer...unfortunately life doesn't always live up to expectations.

The SunPCI III is, I think, the primary selling point of the Blade 1500 -- it's what separates this workstation from the proprietary competition by essentially combining an UltraSPARC and an IA32 machine into one unit with full binary compatibility for both architectures.

Following on from...

The proprietary 64-bit workstation market is dominated by Sun Microsystems

All very nice. Except that the UltraSPARC is not a proprietary 64-bit system! The SPARC series of chips are developed by SPARC, in whom Sun have a relatively large stake. Such chips include the Leon2, the designs for which are available under the conditions of the Lesser GPL. This is not a proprietary architecture! Want to make your own SPARC chip? Download the SPARC definitions and get to it! No-one's going to stop you, this is after all an open system!

OK, so there's one thing in there that does make the Blade workstation proprietary, and that's the IA-32 compliant processor on the hardware PC emulator. That's a closed-license design, not nice and open and standards-compliant like the SPARCs are.

From this.

Sorry, I didn't see the later link about the Leon processor. That does indeed appear to be open source. Simply linking to SPARC, however, doesn't provide much information about the available open source implementations of SPARC.

From the SPARC website:

Any version of the SPARC Instruction Set can be licensed from SPARC International, and then used to design processors implementing that open standard. Truly - in letter and in spirit, SPARC's open - for business!

OpenCores, on the other hand, is really open source. You get the full design of the entire chip; you could just produce the chip by sending the CAD files to a chip fab and having them produce it. All of the Verilog/VHDL/etc. are open and freely available for you to use and modify. Even if you license the SPARC ISA, you still have to design the chip yourself.

Hell, there are plenty of ISA's that you can license. The IA32 architecture is implemented by Intel, AMD, Transmeta, and others. PowerPC is implemented by IBM and Motorola. MIPS chips are produced by lots of people. Open ISA's are a dime a dozen. What's important about OpenCores is that the full chip design is completely open.

So what's Sparc V? Swiss Cheese? Sparc specs have been available for a LONG time.

As I understand it, Fujitsu develops their own chip compatable with the SPARC architecture.

intel processors are PROPRIETARY. They are not a published, open standard, like SPARC and MIPS. You can license the SPARC for $99 IIRC. You can not do this with intel. You must pay much more money to license their instruction set, under much more restrictive terms.

intel processors (x86) are COMMODITY processors. They are a "de-facto" standard, in the same way that Microsoft Windows is a de-facto standard operating system. It is in no way Open. It is proprietary.

Gcc is also most heavily optimized for the intel platform.

This bit is at least correct. That's because most people have PeeCees with intel (or compatible) processors in them, and most development, by default, has been done in this architecture. Optimisations on this architecture therefore benefit most people.

intel processors are PROPRIETARY. They are not a published, open standard, like SPARC and MIPS. You can license the SPARC for $99 IIRC. You can not do this with intel. You must pay much more money to license their instruction set, under much more restrictive terms.

intel processors (x86) are COMMODITY processors. They are a "de-facto" standard, in the same way that Microsoft Windows is a de-facto standard operating system. It is in no way Open. It is proprietary.

Gcc is also most heavily optimized for the intel platform.

This bit is at least correct. That's because most people have PeeCees with intel (or compatible) processors in them, and most development, by default, has been done in this architecture. Optimisations on this architecture therefore benefit most people.

I thought I was a pretty big geek, but that article looked like pure gibberish to me. ;-)

Go read something like this... http://www.sparc.org/standards/v9.ps.Z

Then do something constructive with the knowledge gained. Then you will be a "pretty big geek". So many people consider themselves geeks because they enjoy tinkering with computers at what is realistically, a superficial level.

Take CPU instruction sets, register knowledge of various interconnected VLSI's, logic schematics and protocol's down to the bit level, then you will be what I would consider a geek.

I would suspect that my city would have 2 or 3 members who really know something about PPC assembler. ;-)

Nice job on repeating me there. Too bad you need to learn more history.

It's pretty cool that Motorola provides free bound manuals. Sun also provides full information on their SPARC design. Sadly, I think they charge for bound manuals. :-(

Exactly, and of course there is their membership and adoption of Gnome, involvement with Apache, etc. Not to mention that they were the most open of the Unix companies, they effectively open sourced SPARC right at the beginning. Fujitsu make and sell their own line of SPARC chips and servers, because of this, and www.sparc.org is still a real entity because Sun continues to support it. NFS, NIS, Java, and a whole host of core unix things we take for granted today all came about because Sun invented them and open sourced the specifications if not the code. Sun goes on about Open Systems, and are one of the few that really mean it, even if they don't go as far as a lot of people, including some insiders, would like.

Kind of like Sun's monopoly of Solaris/Sparc systems, and HP's monopoly of PA-RISC/HP/UX systems, and IBM's monopoly of POWER/AIX system?

When did Apple "discover" the rackmount server market? 2003?

Solaris runs on many vendors' hardware and Sun is now pushing Linux and Solaris on X86, HP is moving their hardware and OS and customers to IA64, and IBM is a HUGE supporter of Linux on X86 and every other platform they make and have stated that they will replace AIX when Linux contains all of the required functionality

The name of the company is Apple Computer, Inc. Not AppleSoft. They make computers. That is their business.

Of course... AppleSoft is floating point basic for the Apple ][, everyone knows that ;)

They tried the OS license game. Those hardware vendors did nothing to expand the market but instead just canabilized Apple's hardware sales.

Exactly - everyone was able to make a cheaper PPC box than Apple, and Apple *HARDWARE* revenue dropped. That tells me Apple hardware isn't/wasn't competetive. If this has changed, the notion still exists in many people's minds that Apple hardware is overpriced.

When I can go to Fry's and build a system that runs OSX, I probably will -- betcha there's lots of Slashdotters who fall into the same category - user who would be quick to piece together a generic PPC system for $500 and pay Apple $120 for an OS, but wouldn't buy the entire sytstem from Apple.

Well, no "sparc" implies Scalable Processor ARChitecture, "an open set of technical specifications that any person or company can license and use to develop microprocessors and other semiconductor devices based on published industry standards." See the SPARC International web site for more info.

Actually, SPARC would have been a far better option, since it's a 100% open spec paltform. The license cost just $99!!! Amazing..

PPC

Don't forget SPARC! It is also an open alternative to Wintel with a good selection of excellent operating systems: Solaris, Linux, and *BSD.

We all should embrace PowerPC, SPARC, MIPS, and other well-known and easily licensed brands of ISAs. These--as long as Congress doesn't screw everything up--will be the path forward when Microsoft, Intel, et. al. try to shove TCPA down everyone's throats.

Also, it certainly doesn't hurt that Sun, SGI, IBM (RS/6000), and Apple all produce really good hardware that lasts into the secondary markets. It isn't hard to find ten-year-old examples of each of these brands still serving useful purposes throughout server rooms and hobbyist desktops all over the world.

When the Wintel-brainwashed masses find themselves backed into an alley with the only exit closing rapidly, we can say to them, "We have the way out!" (imagine Microsoft reeling at the bitter taste of their own words:)

see www.sparc.org

...which finally has the SPARC V8 manual and the SPARC V9 manual online (online manuals appears to be what the original poster wanted), although they only seem to have the V9 manual online as compressed PostScript, not PDF. In the past, that documentation wasn't online; I heard a claim that it was due to copyright issues with whoever produced the printed versions (Addison-Wesley?).

See the SPARC Standards Documents Depository for the standards documents at sparc.org.

All technical information about the architecture is available for free and without royalties from SPARC International's public website. Anyone is welcome to download the SPARC specifications, which provide all of the technical requirements needed to design processors and other products based on the open SPARC standard.

• The SPARC instruction set is published as IEEE Standard 1754-1994.
  
• SPARC specifications are available for licensing by any person or company, giving customers flexibility and freedom to design their own solution.
  
• Control of the SPARC architecture is in the hands of an independent, non-profit organization, SPARC International, whose membership is open to everyone.
  

I agree completely with Sun on this one. They have to make a buck, and when a free OS comes along wanting to utilize its systems and take away from its revenue. I work with Sparc 10 systems everyday, and I have come to love the Solaris system, it is pretty flawless and is specifically designed for the Ultra Sparc architecture. Plus, many people the utilize the Sparc Systems with Solaris use specifically written programs for the Solaris systems and are designed in house, this OpenBSD system could be hell on those programmers and Sys Admin.

But Sun don't many any money from Solaris, it's just the stuff you need to run your apps on Sun hardware. Sun are a hardware company first and foremost.

Secondly, Sun don't even own the UltraSPARC, certainly not in the same way that Intel own the Xeon - see the SPARC International web site. SPARC is about as close as you can get to an Open Source processor.

From reading the article, it seems that Sun simply didn't have anyone looking after the BSD community like they had looking after the Linux community, and when the matter was brought to their attention, they assigned someone to do the job.

Of course, anyone who pays $$$ for modern Sun kit is an idiot if they want to run anything other than Solaris on it, because Solaris, as well as being a solid and powerful Unix implementation in its own right, is designed from the ground up for SPARC hardware, it doesn't have to make any compromises for compatibility's sake. That's why NetBSD is generally slower than FreeBSD, it deliberately avoids anything too platform specific, and performance suffers as a result.

but Sun stands alone behind the SPARC

That's not entirely accurate... There's several system vendors on the SPARC list.

Yep... lots. SPARC is an open standard. Fujitsu and TI make (made?) them, amongst others.

If someone wanted to manufacture their own CPU, this makes it pretty easy. SPARC V9 is the 64-bit version.

not sure where you got the idea that x86 is the only cpu-arch available...

if intel & microsoft want to degrade it so hollings-x86-multimedia-and-gaming-platform, I wish them good luck... ... and go with sane architectures

have fun playing games :)

I would like to see one of these give a specFp result

I bet that it could cane IA64 in the specInt but the real test would be floating point and to do IEEE754 properly you need 64 bit otherwise you end up emulating it

now we have of the true 64 bit microproessor's

Sun Microsystems - Processors which are a Sparc

PA-risc which is MIPS like

and MIPS64 which I like alot

of the ports linux to 64bit for linux HPPA and the oldie but goodie linux Alpha and linux sprac64 of course not forgeting linux for IA64 but unfortunately the linux for MIPS is not 64bit so if ever their was a challenge as linux is mostly 64bit clean its to do a MIPS64 port

oh and intel wont like to say linux for hammer which is not real 64bit just has some 64bit registers tacked on (but hey you can do fp right ;-)

(Has something changed in slashcode so that anchor tags now get filtered out unless you choose HTML formatted?).

SPARC does not come from Sun. See the SPARC organizations homepage. I believe Sun actually purchases many of its chips from another company. SPARC is a standard. Of course other people have addressed why you are wrong about everything else you've said.

Attempting to measure how fast a computer can go by its CPU's clock speed is tantamount to measuring how fast a car can go by its engine's horsepower. There are many more factors at play here.

Let's start with the whole RISC vs. CISC thing. Everyone knows that RISC is more efficient; the only thing that has kept CISC alive this long is backwards compatibility with the Wintel juggernaut. You develop a lean, efficient instruction set, then you write compiler back ends that take advantage of it.

Also keep in mind that Sun's motherboard designs are true performers. The path between the CPU, memory, and bus are designed to move data around in ways that just aren't possible with Intel.

Did you know that SPARC is more or less an "open" CPU design? It was designed to be a multi-vendor instruction set, one that would be 'common' without having one vendor calling all the shots. Read www.sparc.org for more details.