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Sun Moves Into Commodity Silicon

Posted by kdawson on from the whole-lotta-threads dept.

Samrobb writes "According to Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, Sun has decided to release its UltraSPARC T2 processor under the GPL. Schwartz writes, 'We're announcing the fastest microprocessor we've ever shipped this week — delivering 89.6 Ghz of parallel computing power on a single chip — running standard Java applications and open source OS's. Simultaneously, we've said we're entering the commodity marketplace, and opening the chip up to our competition... To add fuel to the fire, the blueprints for our UltraSPARC T2... the core design files and test suites, will be available to the open source community, via its most popular license: the GPL.'" Sun is still working on getting these released; early materials are up on OpenSPARC.net.

5 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing to see here, please move along. by Shadowlore · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's what I got the first time I tried loading this article on /.

    But seriously, what's the real point? Are the means to actually make one of these processors beyond 99% of companies and pretty much 99.99% of the people on the planet? What about the patenting of the process or equipment to actually make the processor?

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    My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
    1. Re:Nothing to see here, please move along. by inzy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      it was beyond most people to own a computer in 1960

      now most people in developed countries use dozens (including embedded systems) every day, and a desktop of awesome (by 1960s standards) power can be had for a few days salary

      think big, cast aside pre-conceptions

  2. Commodity is a relative term... by igotmybfg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...when you are talking about a market with massive investment related non-recoverable expenses & high barriers to entry, such as processor fabrication.

    Although I submit it would be really cool to just manufacture these things in my garage.

  3. FPGAs by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 3, Insightful
    You, Yes, I mean YOU! can easily build your own CPU using FPGAs.

    Many FPGA houses provide free ARM cores etc for inclusion on their FPGAs. You can build an ARM-based (or other core based) device using free download tools and run it on an FPGA that costs a few bucks. To do this the licensee need to pay a heft licencing fee to ARm or whomever. Now they can also distribute GPL cores.

    But is this really useful? To use a GPL core would mean that all the rest of the chip design would have to be released too. Very few hardware builders will be prepared to release their silicon source code because that is often the only way they have of preventing mass knock-offs etc.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  4. Re:Sweet by heinousjay · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's called a joke. You may hear a few of these on this "slashdot" website

    The important thing to note is that the "jokes" often lack humor, so recognizing them becomes a terrifying ordeal of memorizing the groupthink prejudices.

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