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Sun Open-Sourcing UltraSPARC Design
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!"
But what are some other examples of open source hardware? How practical is this approach to hardware? I don't mean things like "get iron hot, add carbon, make steel" but more high tech stuff.
I'm all for their ideas on OpenSolaris, but this may be going a bit too far. Didn't they open Solaris to sell more hardware? I'm pretty sure a company that doesn't make money is like a species that doesnt reproduce... dead.
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So get out your Virtex FPGAs and your Verilog compilers, and let's get ready to hack some hardware!"
:)
Thats going to give us a nice biiig processor
These new servers absolutely rock, and at superb prices.
I once had the pleasure of a 4-way Opteron v40z with a development version of 64-bit Solaris 10. It was a screamer, especially compared to our 4-way Dell P4 Xeon box, and 64-bit.
It was plenty fast enough to host 4 zones and several developers working on KDE, gcc and all manner of other stuff.
At last, Sun looks like it's turning the corner (despite the best efforts of some of its PHBs - no names mentioned).
Good luck Sun.
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.
FP! SP! TP!
Frame Pointer
Stack Pointer
ummmm...
What's TP??
Oh yeah
Toilet Paper - aka SCO Legal Documentation.
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?
Rat brains are cheaper and self-replicating.
It seems that Sun is trying to outdo IBM in terms of the open processor thing. It will be interesting to see which approach works better in the short run and why.
:-)
Now all we need is the source code to the standard Java class libraries and we will be good to go
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm doubting that Sun synthesizes verilog to get a 2 GHz processor. Their CAD teams must create custom transistor designs and use formal equivalence with the verilog to prove correctness. Synthesizing the entire processor must require more than one Virtex4 or Stratix-II part, so I can't see people really doing anything with this other than proof-of-concept systems. You could possibly cannibilize parts of the design to make it fit in an embedded system (that's the only speed you'd be able to get out of it). I... dunno. There must be a reason.
:-)
The best part in my mind? Think of all of the processor design classes in upper-level EE courses that are going to get a whole lot easier!
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...)
You can license ARM and PowerPC cores -- but they will probably get a bit cheaper if this one is available for free.
f pgas/virtex/virtex_ii_pro_fpgas/capabilities/power pc.htm
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/
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_
It's become a custom of late to bash Sun. And, given the neurotic, manic image that they've been projecting, It's not hard to see why... One minute they're holding their cards close to their chest, the next moment, they throw their hand out on the table and say "whattaya thinka that?"
Even though Sun has a wonderful history of sharing their sources in many things, including many of the foundations on which Linux is built, it's really hard to give them full credit because their message is so... mixed.
Well, it may be the Sun is finally making a comeback. I came very, very close to buying a Sun last week. The deal-breaker was that I could not buy one with 2x 300 GB SCSI drives, in a 1U config, with 4 front-mount drive bays. These guys could, and did so at a price that rocked, and the server itself is just quality hardware.
I wish Sun well - there's plenty about them we can use! (EG: OpenOffice)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You know, I'm not sure how much of an impact this will have. There are other sparc manufacturers, but no one really seems to take notice.
So, how long until we can buy discount chinese-made ultraSPARC chips at Wal-Mart?
It's a little bit early to say yet, but if all the "design source, verification suite and simulation models" are released as open-source (as TFA said), and if the license would allow design and manufacture of systems based on that chip without paying an arm and a leg (which TFA didn't mention), I'd say: "Woohooo!", and I'd say this for all the developing countries, including China, India, etc.
And I hope this will "sparc" a revival of the sparc acrhictecture!
HP should've done the same with the Alpha architecture instead of letting it die a forgotten death. What a shame!
A field programmable gate array is a little (fairly) inexpensive chip with hundreds of thousands of gates that can be programmed into lots of different types of hardware, and reprogrammed at your convience.
I've worked with stuff from Xilinx and it's pretty impressive.
The other bonus to this is that you can take the Verilog or VHDL langauge (used to write hardware) and simulate it with great accuracy.
We just 'make' our own CPU's and run Solaris ( or NetBSD ). So long after AMD and INTEL have sold their souls, practical open computing can live on.
Not that leon ( and other 'open' cpus ) was 'bad' but, this is from the people who brought SPARC to the world..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Excluding the fab, it takes an enormous amount of design and layout effort to go from RTL to masks. SparcT1 is not a purely synthesized design. Even if it were, the tuning required to make synth work is a nontrivial effort requiring a significant tool foundry.
I suppose that once we have open source versions of: schematic capture, synthesis, floorplanning, layout, timing, validation, and mask generation, then we can focus on an open source process and an open source fab. Not bloody likely!!!
I think the biggest benefit here is that now both hackers and Universities now have a REAL architecture to study in their classrooms. I'll definitely be on the prowl for resumes of students who studied real microprocessor Verilog in college, and not simple ISCAS circuits or architectures from the 1980's.
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The first sentence states:
"Sun Microsystems Inc. is looking to ramp up interest in its new UltraSPARC T1 processor by open-sourcing parts of the multicore chip."
For those looking to actually burn an UltraSparc onto their favorite FPGA board are going to be out of luck. Sun couldn't release all the code because they probably have some patents or license agreements.
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.
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Sounds more like a sunstroke to me.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
With up to 32 simultaneous threads in one incredibly low-power, low-heat processor, you gain the high-volume throughput you need, while saving millions on power and cooling costs.
Wow, you'd have to be an idiot to not want to save millions! Nevermind that the technology (Cool Threads) sounds like the name of a Hot Topic spin off... Sign me up!
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
Er, you could emulate a SPARC years ago; open-sourcing the design of the processor doesn't affect that. But then, I get the feeling that I've been trolled.
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.
Sun's microSPARC processor has been available for download for quite some time. It is available as synthesizable verilog source code and I think it comes with a PCI master. If sparc is not your style, download their picoJava processor instead.
I'd be surprised if they release the codebase for the entire chip. There is alot of industry secrets that go into processors that are not patented. By giving this away, they'd give IBM and HP the abilitity to analyze the performance of the chip with a fine tooth comb. It only provide more FUD for HP and IBM to throw at them.
The interface portions of the chip to be probably be opened up. Mainly to allow other companies to design chipsets for their new system.
I would like to see where they go with this. Software is a great thing to opensource because changes can be make with little effort and it is very cheap to verify your changes worked. Chip design on the other hand is extremely expensive, with slow turn around times and difficulting in debugging. Not only do you have to worry about the code, but how to design it properly for the process that is being used to fabricate it. Opensource is all about turnaround time, and chip design currently can not support that. Now if someone could create a extremely high density reprogrammable chip (500M gates) then all bets are off.
However, this will be a great learning experience to see any code they provide. It will give student and people in developing nations a chance to learn what goes into a 'high' performance chip design.
Perhaps you should start comparing prices, then:
So, it would appear that Sun's support prices are actually lower rather than beating Red Hat's. In fact, for one of Sun's cheapest server systems, you can get Platinum support for $2304 for three years. Platinum support includes both 24/7 software support and 24/7 two-hour response time on-site hardware support. That's cheaper then one year of Red Hat's software-only 24/7 support.
Again, compare prices:
So, the Sun server may not be as cheap as building a system out of spare parts lying around in your basement, but it really is pretty cheap compared to the competition in that space.
What if, eh? Is the core OS X codebase portable enough that Apple could change horses in mid-stride?
We'd have computers with an open CPU but closed whatever-their-hand-is extension running an open OS with a closed GUI. Only thing left to deliver would be an open Distribution/Payment Channel with a closed DRM; I'm game for that if it's similar to the Mac-side small-apps economy. (A powerful freebie and a right-priced professional version. The freebie is so good you can easily justify the full-package price, especially knowing that it's going to a small team, so you're directly putting supper on their table.)
This could be a damn fine bit of social revolution.
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My "favorite" part is that the rails--the RAILS! mind you--are an additional $150!
Want cable management? Wave buh-bye to another 95 greenbacks.
Put another way: if you add both, you're paying a STAGGERING 25% of the cost just on racking the server!! You mean to tell me that of the HUGE costs Sun has in developing these machines--to say nothing of actually manufacturing them, 25 cents of every dollar gets eaten up by the folks in the rack-mount department?!
That's like charging $20,000 for a car, but asking for another $5,000 if you actually want umm...err... wheels.
All that said, the overall cost of the gear is still pretty derned reasonable--and if it's anywhere near as good as the older Sun gear I personally use regularly, it will be good indeed.
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Well it should be noted that the Dell server doesn't come with rails either, and they add $99 to the price of an entry level PowerEdge 850 for the "static" rails. These static rails are literally two pieces of metal as shown here, and don't telescope (much less have a cable management arm). If you want rails that actually let you pull the server all the way out of the rack - still no cable management - well, those are $129. It's pretty sad how much any vendor will gouge you on rails. These rail prices from Dell are actually much lower than in the past as well. A few months ago rails for a few PowerEdge 750s I ordered were priced at $200 per server. To their credit, Sun seems to have their 2U server rails priced the same as their 1U offerings. Rails for a Dell 2850 are a painful $250.