Interesting to note about SPARC V9 clone.... The plan (which is not revealed publicly yet) is not to stop at RTL. We intend to publish cookbooks to get to gates and beyond. If you look at the web pages, there are design partners, there are EDA partners and Fabs. Obviously you can read between the lines in terms of what can happen with all these folks.. stay tuned...
Yup! If we can run an entire processor in a FPGA (albeit at a low MHz) and with Linux - this makes for a very interesting CPU/OS class - take real world stuff and analyze. I hope MicroSPARC fits into one of the newer FPGAs and I hope somebody does it and gives it away. There is a C based performance model as an instruction simulator where you can boot OS like Solaris or Linux is also included in the distribution. Hopefully it helps some folks... renu raman
Let me try to answer some of the questions: 1) MicroSPARC II is not exciting - its no more exciting than any other RISC CPU that you can build for $10 in modern technology. Its comparable (and has plusses and minuses compared to your latest ARM and MIPS stuff) in feature set - the difference is free upfront and minimal royalties if you do build a $10 thing. More details on this will be available on the Sun web page in a week or so. I am happy to share comparative data, but that can be controversial. So, my tendency is to avoid it. 2) MicroSPARC is the first processor coupled with Linux that will enable one to build an entire system based on open/scsl models. The real cost to embedded designers is nothing upfront - other than design-in cost and perhaps royalties later. This is important if you are build $1-$10 things that run linux and runs around your house. There are some companies who plan to offer such a chip with 4MB of Embedded DRAM for $10. Imagine linux on it as well. Lots of neat applications can crop up. 3) Free Hardware IP is essential in this new world of highly integrated devices. One cannot re-invent the entire system everytime. Copying and re-using IP is important (quality can be questioned). But if you want to build a $10 device that can pack 10m transistor - neither you can pay a lot of royalty nor can you waste time negotiating getting it. Thus SCSL. 4) MicroSPARC IIep is used in the SunRay box. So we released the SunRay, the protocol for SunRay and now the processor. Hopefully we will have different people build cheaper and cheaper SunRays over time. That should be enough for today... renu raman
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Interesting to note about SPARC V9 clone.... The plan (which is not revealed publicly yet) is not to stop at RTL. We intend to publish cookbooks to get to gates and beyond. If you look at the web pages, there are design partners, there are EDA partners and Fabs. Obviously you can read between the lines in terms of what can happen with all these folks.. stay tuned...
Yup! If we can run an entire processor in a FPGA (albeit at a low MHz) and with Linux - this makes for a very interesting CPU/OS class - take real world stuff and analyze. I hope MicroSPARC fits into one of the newer FPGAs and I hope somebody does it and gives it away. There is a C based performance model as an instruction simulator where you can boot OS like Solaris or Linux is also included in the distribution. Hopefully it helps some folks... renu raman
Let me try to answer some of the questions: 1) MicroSPARC II is not exciting - its no more exciting than any other RISC CPU that you can build for $10 in modern technology. Its comparable (and has plusses and minuses compared to your latest ARM and MIPS stuff) in feature set - the difference is free upfront and minimal royalties if you do build a $10 thing. More details on this will be available on the Sun web page in a week or so. I am happy to share comparative data, but that can be controversial. So, my tendency is to avoid it. 2) MicroSPARC is the first processor coupled with Linux that will enable one to build an entire system based on open/scsl models. The real cost to embedded designers is nothing upfront - other than design-in cost and perhaps royalties later. This is important if you are build $1-$10 things that run linux and runs around your house. There are some companies who plan to offer such a chip with 4MB of Embedded DRAM for $10. Imagine linux on it as well. Lots of neat applications can crop up. 3) Free Hardware IP is essential in this new world of highly integrated devices. One cannot re-invent the entire system everytime. Copying and re-using IP is important (quality can be questioned). But if you want to build a $10 device that can pack 10m transistor - neither you can pay a lot of royalty nor can you waste time negotiating getting it. Thus SCSL. 4) MicroSPARC IIep is used in the SunRay box. So we released the SunRay, the protocol for SunRay and now the processor. Hopefully we will have different people build cheaper and cheaper SunRays over time. That should be enough for today... renu raman