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Sun Moves Into Commodity Silicon
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.
Go look at the performance of Windows games on UltraSPARC T1. Now, figure that UltraSPARC T2 still doesn't run Windows.
This is one of those moves where some abandonware is being open sourced. Usually this happens with software, but here it's happening for hardware. The SPARC line is in decline; Sun is moving to x86 machines. Sun's hardware business is on the same trajectory as SGI's, but about five years behind. (Remember SGI, the MIPS processors, the overpriced x86 workstations, the bankruptcy?)
As Wikipedia points out, Sun already did this for the UltraSparc T1 in 2006. Nobody cared. Now they're doing it for the UltreSparc T2.
This might be useful if someone needed to emulate a SPARC CPU twenty or fifty years from now. So it's good to have the details of the CPU design on the record for historical purposes. But nobody is going to manufacture the things.