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Sun Open-Sourcing UltraSPARC Design

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the why-shouldn't-it-work-for-hardware-too dept.

AKAImBatman writes "While everyone was busy with the holiday season, Sun Microsystems quietly announced the start of the OpenSPARC project. Unlike previous CPUs that were based on the "Open" SPARC specifications (such as LEON), Sun is releasing the complete Verilog source code to their latest and greatest microprocessor. Their current time frame for releasing the source code to the public is in March of 2006. Given their success with the OpenSolaris project, it seems that this is likely to be more than just vaporware. So get out your Virtex FPGAs and your Verilog compilers, and let's get ready to hack some hardware!"

9 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Implementability by Skowronek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are some questions. FPGAs aren't that big... a XC2V6000 that costs $4500 is about the right size for four cores of a simple 4-SIMD 24bit fixed-point signal processor - a UltraSPARC will not fit in it, unless it's seriously cut down.

    Also speed of FPGAs is a huge let-down, unless a design takes advantage of their structure. There is no reason to believe that the processor will be designed for FPGAs... It is likely to be therefore very slow, even if you can implement it.

    1. Re:Implementability by Jerry+Coffin · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Parent should be modded up -- there haven't been many other intelligent comments on this story.

      Contrary to TFA's claim, I suspect for a lot of people, Sun's previous attempt at open-sourcing a core (to the microSPARC) would be a lot more interesting if you wanted to put the design on an FPGA (unfortunately, I'm not at all sure this is still available). I'm not sure how well it would work on an FPGA either, but at least it stands a whole lot better chance, and it's probably still plenty of CPU for most typical FPGA-based designs.

      Then again, www.opencores.org, www.fpga4fun.com, etc., already have quite a number of CPU cores available, many without the likelihood of patent problems, and such that are likely to accompany using a SPARC core. Better still, quite a few of these have already been tested in various FPGAs and a few have been put into ASICs as well.

      --
      The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

      --
      The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
  2. ok, I'm convinced by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    open source or not, these coolthreads processors are the first thing from Sun that looks exciting in the last six years. Finally, some leadership. Too late?

    1. Re:ok, I'm convinced by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Sun has systems based on the UltraSPARC-T1 and they're available right now starting under $3000. Their throughput and performance for multithreaded applications is simply staggering. In fact, the top-of-the-line Sun Fire T2000 server based on this processor is about $6000 less than the comparably-equipped Dell PowerEdge 6850 (which is the best that we could find from them) and our performance tests with real-world applications show the T2000 providing well over twice the performance while drawing well under half the power and taking half the space (2U versus 4U).

      Sure it may not be the best machine to use if you want to play Quake 4 or Half Life 2, but for scalable multithreaded apps, it really is quite impressive.

  3. Re:too far? by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They still own the patents on various parts of the implementation.

    From what I understand of patent law, if someone else wants to distribute hardware, they'll still need to get patent licenses.

    IOW, Sun is becoming an IP company of a rare sort.

    --
    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  4. Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog: Our Most Valuable Intellectual Property

    And now you have a pretty good idea of what's in store for tomorrow. (Pay careful attention to the "open market for parts" comment - we're planning on delivering an extraordinary surprise to the industry. No sense in letting the software folks have all the fun...)

  5. PowerPC and Arm might get cheaper by putko · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You can license ARM and PowerPC cores -- but they will probably get a bit cheaper if this one is available for free.

    Right now Xilinx and Altera make user-configurable FPGA processors. Most of the processor is fixed, but you can encode what happens for special instructions. Here's one: http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon_solutions/f pgas/virtex/virtex_ii_pro_fpgas/capabilities/power pc.htm

    Now if Sun is giving away the processor, there's no reason for you to pay more for a PowerPC-based design -- someone will make a "cheapo" FPGA-extendable UltraSPARC.

    --
    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
  6. Re:too far? by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Interesting
    As others pointed out, most people will just be simulating the chip.

    Of course, this means that you have more people trying out different things.

    Sun then takes the most interesting stuff, and puts it in their next ge chips.

    How is this (getting people to improve your product) a dumb idea?

  7. Listening to Open Graphics Project? by Theovon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Someone there must have been paying attention to the Open Graphics Project. They're working on a design for an open source graphics card. Naturally, the drivers will be open source, but ultimately, so will the Verilog code to the internal GPU design.