Slashdot Mirror
Sun Niagara 2 CPU Now Open Source
downix writes "Late last night Sun Microsystems announced the immediate availability of the UltraSPARC T2, also known as the Niagara 2 CPU. While we all might not have a silicon fab in the basement, the access to this source code reaffirms Sun's commitment to open source, and in addition gives us FPGA-lovers something new to play with. The source code can be downloaded (with registration) from OpenSPARC.net. Already the previously open sourced T1 has spawned spin-off projects, such as the Simple RISC S1."
How we know is more important than what we know.
Someone corrected the spelling of "Niagra" to "Niagara" - ScuttleMonkey, if it was you, I congratulate you!
:) Good job!
Honestly
I can remember when the OpenBSD crew was having issues getting sparc specs. My how times have changed.
The RTL code (Verilog) is GPLed:
http://www.opensparc.net/faqs/licensing/
Other people have built and are shipping product with the prior T1 version, the SimpleRISC folks:
http://www.srisc.com/?s1
The licensing pretty much says "Here, have it, have fun!"
Sun Viagra 2 CPU... Ok.. I need glasses
I kind of wonder what the relevance of the availability of the
blueprint of a modern multithreaded special-purpose server
CPU means to the average Joe.
Probably not much, unless Joe has got an degree with a specialization
in computer science or electrical engineering.
--- Eat my sig.
I am saying that from what I have been reading that people are complaining about them [Sun] not releasing information they [open source programmers] need to get their hardware working in Linux.
Awesome, do you happen to know how well these things work compared to other processors?
My only experience with Sun hardware is from the slow out dated machines we have running here.
Sun's in sort of a weird position. They have largely embraced OSS (witness the fact that they open sourced most notably SPARC, OpenSolaris, and Java), but I think are not entirely at ease with it. From at least one point of view, they have a lot to lose from Linux taking over for Solaris. OpenSolaris is also under the CDDL, which is not GPL-compatible. I wouldn't be surprised if the incompatibility is viewed as a benefit by a lot of Sun, rather than a bug.
So they may not be perfect, but they are a heck of a lot better than most companies.
Dude. There's people who have made derivative works mentioned in the summary. You can't even be bothered reading the summary before posting? Wow.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yes, I think you are wrong on this.
The processor is open-source (OpenSPARC), Sun's own operating system port on the processor is also open-source (OpenSolaris), and of course Linux is open-source. If someone wants to go through the labor-of-love to port Linux to SPARC then there's nothing "hidden".
Sun sells x86-based machines that run Linux and I think they'll even sell you a Linux distro to go with the box (of course you don't need to get from them... any distro will do.)
I fail to see the conspiracy angle.
I noticed they released it under the GPL 2 (or is the chip design released under a different license?).
Does this mean they could attack a company that started selling their processor or one based on this information with a patent?
It means some other (large) company can take the design, improve it, release a product based on it without paying huge fees, and then contribute their changes back to the public domain. So no, it doesn't help joe user, but it does help industry players save on R&D, which is still a good thing.
Jeremy
How big an FPGA would be required to run this? Can you really download the configs and run it on an FPGA at a reasonable speed? Which Xilinx model?
How about running Linux on that simulated Niagara2, like you can uCLinux on a Microblaze? The exciting part would be replacing parts of the OS, like the TCP/IP stack, with "HW" configs for really high performance, customized per app. None of your processes use some dozen instructions? Drop their microcode in favor of a faster multiplier...
--
make install -not war
don't understand you need a fab to do anything with this,
Not quite.... One can burn this into an FPGA. I don't know how fast it would run but if the goal is to study and experiment with processor design then an FPGA is the tool. The purpose ere is to allow people to study and modify the CPU
Wikipeadia of course has some info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array
I prefer MIPS, but SPARC is a close second for favor, mostly due to the open source nature of the design. This is no less than the 4th major SPARC CPU in open source.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I suspect the more stringent licenses are for things that can be embraced and extended, possibly by a particular well-known competitor to Java (;-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I do wonder how Sun is going to make money the next century. They're trying new stuff, like opening up all their sources (java, solaris), but the money doesn't seem to be flowing back from these actions yet. Don't get me wrong, I think this might end up being really good for them selling the CPU in other devices, but I also think Sun makes pretty good products, and one of the last alternatives to the X86s, (for a huge price) and it would be sad if they went down.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Sun licensed SPARC to Texas Instruments, Cypress Semiconductor, and Fujitsu and used their chips in their machines.
I've head the OSS guy at Sun say that they are happy for anyone to build them and they'll be happy to buy them from whoever gives them the best deal.
Ya, we all have those HUGE ( read : expensive ) FPGAs required to implement something like this.
Many of us are lucky to fit a Z80 into what we have.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Isn't it also released under the GPLv3? Anyway, I'm pretty certain that they chose both CDDL and GPLv3 expressly to be incompatible with the Linux kernel, which could otherwise have all their nice features (like ZFS) leaving OpenSolaris with no advantage over Linux.
Yes, but while the register windows were an interesting research project, my opinion is that they weren't worth the complexity and wasted resources they became. After all, you can only make so many calls before the windows run out and then it's similar to a regular CPU but still paying the complexity of having to dork with the windows. And with so many registers, it probably would have been more interesting to have all of them available to the programmer/compiler than just a small subset (and the compiler could have done windowing on its own if it wanted instead of being forced by hardware) with all the hardware complexity.
:)
SPARCs never were about performance though (although there have been some that had reasonable performance for their time). I also liked the MIPS processors as far as load/store went. Other than that, Alpha was OK. I cut my teeth on the M68K family so I guess I'll always like them
I worked with Suns from the 3/50 days, 4, and then SPARCs up until the UltraIIIs (desktops and servers). I always liked the machines (they were usually very stable, there were notable exceptions but most of the time they were solid machines). Good workhorses but not necessarily racehorses.
I actually have the spindle/platters from an old IPI drive (500M or so, IIRC) sitting in my living room, pulled out of drive when we were decomissioning all of our IPI drives.
Well, that "too complex" windowing capability is one of the reasons why the Niagra core can run 4 threads simultaneously. It has 4 windows, and swaps them automatically, enabling a deeper pipeline without breaking the ISA. So, the compiler sees ALU's rather than 1.
In addition, I rolled my own 32-bit SPARC once with only 2 register windows, with the compiler did not control. What you had was a "program" window and an "interrupt" window. So when interrupts happened, rather than having to save the register state before dealing with it, you immediately switched windows and bam, have a completely clean slate of registers to work with.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Disclosure: I work for Sun in their software division. This is not secret information, but Sun plans on making money in the next century by selling hardware. Lots and lots of hardware. Why buy it from Sun when you can get it cheaper from elsewhere? That's the other part of Sun's super secret master plan: support contracts. Business do tend to buy from Sun if they have already done so. Maybe it's just easier, maybe it makes the original decision to buy from Sun look better, I don't know. But Sun still sells $billions in hardware each year. The software revenues are a whole lot less.
I'd love to know where people like you get this kind of insight from.. Sun is an open source company.. they always have been. They were doing open source before "the revolution" even happened. They're more than "at ease" with it, they have some of the oldest living open source hackers on payroll.
As for this whole "oh noes!! Linux might takeover from Solaris!!" crap, why do people continue to ascribe the Microsoft world view - everything and everyone is a competitor - to other companies? Sun and IBM and every other normal company (read: not a monopoly) has one business strategy: give the customer what they want. If the customer wants Linux, Sun will sell them Linux. If the customer wants Solaris, Sun will sell them Solaris. If the customer wants Intel or AMD or SPARC, Sun will sell them that. IBM will also sell you Linux or Aix or Intel or AMD or SPARC.. if you want to pay them for that, that's what you'll get. It's only Microsoft who seems to think they can dictate the solutions to the customers instead of the other way around.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I've translated this chip design into an LTSpice model. I now run all my software on this spice model..
and my computer is 100 times faster!
Granted, you can't build a fab in your basement. But I imagine governments don't have this problem.
What are the implications of Sun doing this? There are countries that wouldn't be allowed to buy their finished Niagara servers that could now, given time, reproduce their technology. Doesn't this make a mockery of the U.S. technology embargo against certain countries?
Perhaps I'm simply missing something, but if AMD can get into hot water over their processors showing up in Iran why does Sun get a pass for revealing how to construct similar technology? It can't just be immediacy. If anything wouldn't the "blueprints" be of more value than the finished product?
It is going to be interesting to see how the GPL is applied to RTL code.
For example, what constitutes derivatives and what can be considered mere-aggregation.
Also can I license an RTL block from another vendor and combine the two in a new chip ?
You are right - some of their older hardware that still is quite usable except for them cutting out support at inopportune times. They've kept 8bit cg* framebuffers yet dropped 24bit ZX's from existence. They kept [very limited] sbus in Opensolaris, yet have made a conscious effort to erase Sparcstations from ever existing in the code.
Should you run into a SunPC or similar, that will bite doubly for being Solaris only (and for versions that may not be in circulation).
Now if you run into something on the order of an E10k, and dont mind powering it, Sun would rather you not.
If they were to clean up Solaris 9 and have it up to speed as best as you can expect a SS/10 (or a Ross SS/20) to run it, that codebase would probably be fine enough.
When you have to pull teeth for their own hardware, they certainly are not going to be any better (See SunPC, E10k's with their hardware license keys) with Linux.
bmc, this definitely applies to you(and those who've dropped the axe):
"The past has been erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth"
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
While we all might not have a silicon fab in the basement
You don't? How tragic. I'm afraid you'll have to hand in your geek card. In the meantime I wonder if the OLPC guys would consider a OSFPPC (One Silicon Fab Plant Per Child) program.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I'd love to see the usage statistics of this design synthesized with ISE, Quartus or Synplify. How much would we have to cut-out to have it fit in an LX160 or similar????
If the customer wants Linux, Sun will sell them Linux. If the customer wants Solaris, Sun will sell them Solaris. If the customer wants Intel or AMD or SPARC, Sun will sell them that. IBM will also sell you Linux or Aix or Intel or AMD or SPARC.
Yes, this is true. But I bet that if you asked them, they would prefer to be selling you Sparc and Solaris, and would prefer if Linux were not as big as it is.
Hardware. I transitioned all of my company's servers to Sun (when they started selling x86 servers) over the last few years, and I couldn't be happier. The equipment is more expensive, but it is also of a superior quality and features real enterprise management features. Opening up Solaris had a lot to do with my initial decision, and I wouldn't be surprised if we don't transition to the T2 in the future. Since all of our servers are virtualized anyway, it isn't really a bad idea to move lots of small servers to a few big servers, and this open architecture will undoubtedly give some experts the opportunity to publish very in depth analysis of the chips.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Not really. Obviously they would prefer that the solutions they have expertise in be the ones wanted by the customer, so they can best serve the customer, but that's about it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
insightful commentary itt
I searched for a link to an actual download (yes, I have a use for the code). Opensparc.net just refers to the "Sun download Center" (no link). Searching on Sun's site, I can only turn up OpenSPARC T1 and not T2.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
who's the considerate jerk who tagged this story 'thanks'? We don't work that way here at Slashdot, buddy. When a company does something like this, you're supposed to tag it 'whocares' or 'toolittletoolate' or something equally dismissive. Damn noobs...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Not to mention that soft-core processors are quite useful (for FPGA or ASIC). See the Xilinx Microblaze and Altera Nios II, which are commercial offerings. There is a large demand for open hardware (see http://opencores.org/ and a processor core is an important building block. Just because you may never read the source, you can still instantiate them in your design and use them. How many of you have looked at the glibc source code? Doesn't stop people from using it.
At least in T1, there are 8 windows for each strand (thread), so 32 windows total. The register file design supports fast window switches within a strand (3 cycles) and can switch between strands on every cycle. The megacell guide included with the RTL has a detailed description of how this really works.
The T1 pipeline is just 6 stages (not terribly deep), while the T2 just adds a bypass stage.
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
Well said,,,,, The new Open System memtality has benefited all users, and developers. With the exception of MS
When did "the revolution" happen? I didn't know about it because it wasn't televised.
(Actually I'd like them supported on OpenBSD, which they now claim to support, as well)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
not yet pal, just not yet. you'll see.
Read radical news here
"to want" is defined as "willing to pay" in economy terms. Should I start a looooong list of all the things I would like? This is so silly... are you willing to spend an afternoon working my garden in exchange for the small favor you want form me - THAT'S the question, or do you want something from me without doing anything in return?
./-subject we're posting under, but couldn't resist...
This is what I HATE about open source. Too many kids grow up with that "I get everything for free" mentality. And don't try to argue they give back to open source - what's the number of people USING open source vs. those actually contributing? Hint: Posting in discussion forums is NOT a contribution (or very very rarely, even most replies to "support questions" are useless).
I'm all for openness and liked Sun's open source Tcl/Tk *a lot* (I wrote a pretty complete and nice looking file manager GUI in ca. 200 lines of code) long before Linux was hot, but I'm against working for free and even more against trying to establish that expectation for SOME people (strange, none of those "free as in free beer" folks expects not to pay for food or their haircut). Has nothing to do with the original
I've had this position for about 2 years now.
IMO, Sun is one of the only companies left innovating.
-Google is just rehashing old ideas.(Gmail? come on....I had webmail 10 years ago.)
-Oracle(eh... RDBMS v45.2 anyone?)
-IBM(If I see one more pointless black-and-white commercial about "ideas" I'm going to scream. IBM should listen to their marketing department and instead of telling us to "Stop thinking, start doing" they should create something that isn't AIX)
And, I will be the lone voice and dare to say that Microsoft, yes them, has a few teams that are starting to 'get it'. Apple is doing a great job with human-computer interaction.
Show me new, for I am tired of your old.
Website Hosting
So I was all set to download the source and build some chips in my basement fab, but then I looked at the system requirements. It's only for Solaris, and worse, it's only for SPARC. How the heck am I supposed to run this software so I can build a CPU when I need that same CPU to run the software? Obviously, Sun is going to have a lot of SPARCs sitting around from earlier development, so they wouldn't have this problem themselves, but they should have thought of it, at least, and provided binaries for Cell or ARM or something.
MIPS is a terrible design. It's no fun to program for it.
I think DLX and Microblaze is a more elegant low-end implementation of a MIPS-like. And I think SPARC and PowerPC are much more practical and useful high-end RISCs.
I would like to see Sun put together a cheap developer's kit, they could market a Mac Mini type form factor as a J2EE developer workstation or something. But the rest of us could pick one up too to see what sorts of cool projects can be done with it. I'm fine with 4-core or 8-core version on such a workstation if it could be sold for under $800. (ideally under $500)
I really don't find it practical to pick up a low end SunFire to use the chip. I think Java developers could benefit from testing and developing their code on highly threaded core. (each core does 2x or 4x SMT i believe)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The difference is that they are now marketing a lack of lock-in as a value-added service. Previously, migrating away from Sun was hard because you had to port your code from SPARC/Solaris to POWER/AIX, PA-RISC/HP-UX, or whatever. Now, they give away all of the individual components. If you are willing to invest in some fab time, you can make your own SPARCs (not for the first time, but I believe the T1 was the first SPARCv9 to be open sourced). You can download the source code for Solaris and modify it. You can buy the support from anyone willing to do this. The only difference is, you'll be buying support from people who have used the tools, rather than from people who built them.
Joel Spolsky criticised Sun for commoditising their own product, when smart businesses commoditise their products that complement theirs. He missed the point, however, that Sun are not selling products anymore, they are selling expertise. It is in their best interests to commoditise all of their products, because their products are the complements of their expertise.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Sorry, I mean I love that they're giving silicon designs out the world, but if there was any really important innovation in the intellectual property behind the Niagara II that would give Sun an advantage in the marketplace they would not be exposing it to all their competitors.
The only business reason I can imagine that Sun would do this is the hope that lot's of Niagara foundries would bloom and thereby cut their costs for sourcing the part.