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NetBSD/sparc Now With SMP

Posted by timothy on from the soon-you'll-have-a-fire dept.

jschauma writes "Largely due to the efforts of Paul Kranenburg, NetBSD -current now supports SMP on sparc. It has been tested on a SPARCstation 20/712, sun4/690 and other systems. See Matthew Green's message to the port-sparc mailing list." (i386 got this back in October.)

4 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Curious about SPARC... by mcgroarty · · Score: 4, Interesting
    There's some info related to the SPARCLite here. It claims that Fuji's SPARCLite core is used in a large number of embedded devices.

    Is this related to the embedded Java processor Sun announced a while back? I never read up on that, and I wasn't sure if they really meant it was running Java bytecode, or if it was merely a processor that was well-suited for Java. Native bytecode sure sounded unlikely.

  2. Re:Curious about SPARC... by pmz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One thing I find interesting about SPARC is that it looks like it was designed for UNIX. Register windows, priviledged mode, many SMP implementations, and the RISC approach in general just makes SPARC a shoe-in for C-language based multi-user multi-processing systems.

    Also, SPARC is far from the kludge that is x86. The transition from 32-bit to 64-bit looks like it went smoothly, and there is 32-bit compatibility built into the 64-bit instruction set.

    Additionally, RISC ISAs are easy to read and understand.

    You can license the SPARC brand for $99 and make your own compliant implementations with only encouragement and a pat on the back from Sun, Fujitsu, etc. Try getting that from Intel! In fact, I see SPARC as one of the get-a-way vehicles if/when Palladium becomes standard on x86 systems. A group of determined people can create a Free SPARC implementation for Free software, and Microsoft and Intel can only pick their nose and cry about it.

    --
    Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
  3. Re:SMP? by CoolVibe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FreeBSD and NetBSD at the moment. Dunno about BSD/OS though, it's been too long ago since I meddled with that.

  4. The "BSD is dying" troll is dying. by nutznboltz · · Score: 4, Funny
    News flash: The frozen body of the "BSD is dying" troll was discovered in an alley yesterday along with a cardboard sign saying "will cut-and-paste anything for food".

    Film at 11.