Good news for SPARC

In article . rogers.com,
Yousuf Khan wrote:

Not surprising really, the Sparc architecture is rapidly being pushed
upmarket to survive, and not of its own strategy. The lower tiers of the
server market are being taken over by the x86 architectures (Xeon and
Opteron), so there is not as much call for separate Sparc architectures to
both exist simultaneously.

The SPARC architecture is mainly being pushed upmarket because Sun lost
sight of the low end of the market. Their plan was to develop high end
chips and then scale them down for low cost systems. It hasn't
worked out for them. If they had put a bit more effort into the low
end they would have a larger low end market. Without a healthy low
end market SPARC won't survive at the high end either.

--
Phillip Fayers School of Physics & Astronomy, Cardiff University (*).
[ (*) - the official trading name of the University of Wales, Cardiff. ]
http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/pub/Phillip.Fayers/
Tel: +44 (0)29 2087 5282 Attribute these comments to me, not UWC.

Il giorno Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Godzilla cos=EC ha scritto:

| I think it means not the captive of any one corporation.
|
|Not true at all. Sun is already if not close to monopoly in the Sparc
|market. I don't know how you define "open" but if you define it like this=
,
|even Microsoft's Windows is "open"

Do you mean I can have a third-party windou$ OS?


Sandro


--=20
Bellum se ipsum alet
La guerra nutre se stessa

Livio, Ab urbe condita, XXXIV,9

In article . net,
"J. J. Farrell" writes:

"Roger Marquis" wrote in message
...
As reported in The Register (.uk)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/33543.html:

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun is reporting that Sun and Fujitsu plan
to standardize their Unix server architectures and have a Fujitsu
subsidiary manufacture the gear. Both companies currently make
Sparc/Solaris servers, which would make combining their operations
a complementary move.

The good news is that finally, after years of declining competitive
advantage, Sun is finally multi-sourcing the production of SPARC
processors.

This can only be good news for consumers as it paves the way for
faster, cheaper SPARC CPUs (still the fastest and most popular open
CPU architecture available).

I am confused. Sun has not owned exclusive rights to SPARC
processors for at least 10 years - since then they've been
on the same footing as everyone else. The first several
versions of SPARC processors used by Sun were not manufactured
by them. SPARC processors have been designed and manufactured
by many companies over the years, and still are. I've had my
hands around many types of SPARC processor over the years,
none of them manufactured by Sun.

How does two of the major manufacturers of SPARC processors
and systems combining their operations result in good news
for the consumer?

While at one time, Sun used a number of manufacturers for their chips
(including Cypress and one or two others I don't remember), these days
I think they only use TI. If Fujitsu's (faster) chips have already
picked up the VIS extensions (or could have those added with
minimal difficulty and without driving costs up much or speeds down any),
that might give Sun an immediate CPU speed boost. (Don't hold me to that,
'cause I'm not sure whether the Fujitu's would be that much faster in
the real world, and 'cause I haven't really looked that deep at it in
awhile.)

--
http://www.smart.net/~rlhamil

In article .rogers.com,
"Yousuf Khan" writes:
"Godzilla" wrote in message
le.rogers.com...
I have only 1 question in regard to your post. Where can I buy another
Sparc CPU other than from Sun?

Fujitsu, for example. Fuji makes their Sparc64 processors, which compete
against Sun's UltraSparc processors. Both are based on the same standard
instruction set.

And IIRC, some of the Fujitsu's are faster. But some time ago at least,
the Fujitsu's did _not_ support VIS, which is over and above the
SPARCv9 spec. That may have changed; I haven't looked at that sort of
thing in awhile.

But as the original posting said, it looks like Fuji and Sun are pooling
their resources together now to combine their processors.

Maybe; I'd like to see that announced directly by Sun before I entirely
believe it.

--
http://www.smart.net/~rlhamil

In article ogers.com,
"Godzilla" writes:
"CJT" wrote in message
...


Sheldon Simms wrote:

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 23:43:30 +0000, Roger Marquis wrote:


As reported in The Register (.uk)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/33543.html:

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun is reporting that Sun and Fujitsu plan
to standardize their Unix server architectures and have a Fujitsu
subsidiary manufacture the gear. Both companies currently make
Sparc/Solaris servers, which would make combining their operations
a complementary move.

The good news is that finally, after years of declining competitive
advantage, Sun is finally multi-sourcing the production of SPARC
processors.

This can only be good news for consumers as it paves the way for
faster, cheaper SPARC CPUs (still the fastest and most popular open
CPU architecture available).


What exactly does "open" mean in this case?


I think it means not the captive of any one corporation.

Not true at all. Sun is already if not close to monopoly in the Sparc
market. I don't know how you define "open" but if you define it like this,
even Microsoft's Windows is "open"

It's more than that; the full description of the (older, 32-bit only)
MicroSPARC IIep was released (I don't know whether you'd call it truly an
open source license, but it's at least free to look at); that is, not just
the documentation, but enough info to either create a full-blown software
simulation or maybe even re-create the chip itself, given a fab (I'm not
sure which, since I know very little about the details of chip designing.)
Out of curiosity, I'm downloading it now; since I don't have verilog,
I can only look at it anyway, but I might learn something; it will take
awhile 'cause I'm on a dialup and it's nearly a 40MB file, not counting
a separate documentation pdf.

But more fundamental than that, Sun set up SPARC International, of
which it is just one member (although certainly the most influential),
and gave it both the SPARC trademark (to license to members with compliant
products) and control over the spec. So it ain't SPARC unless an
organization with members other than just Sun says it is.

Now I'm sure that's not commie-pinko enough for some of the GPL ideologues
(nothing wrong with the GPL for some purposes, but the "all information
should be free" fanatics really frost my cookies; if it cost to create it,
whoever did so has a right to profit from it), but it's a damn
sight more open than Intel, or most of the rest of the industry. The
PowerPC probably comes close, in that IBM, Motorola, and Apple were all
involved in that.

--
http://www.smart.net/~rlhamil

Il giorno Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Richard L. Hamilton cos=EC ha scritto:

[...]

|Now I'm sure that's not commie-pinko enough for some of the GPL ideologues
|(nothing wrong with the GPL for some purposes, but the "all information
|should be free" fanatics really frost my cookies; if it cost to create it,
|whoever did so has a right to profit from it)

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

[...]

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price.

[...]

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or
for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have.



Sandro


--=20
Bellum se ipsum alet
La guerra nutre se stessa

Livio, Ab urbe condita, XXXIV,9

"J. J. Farrell" wrote in message
ink.net...
I am confused. Sun has not owned exclusive rights to SPARC
processors for at least 10 years - since then they've been
on the same footing as everyone else. The first several
versions of SPARC processors used by Sun were not manufactured
by them. SPARC processors have been designed and manufactured
by many companies over the years, and still are. I've had my
hands around many types of SPARC processor over the years,
none of them manufactured by Sun.

How does two of the major manufacturers of SPARC processors
and systems combining their operations result in good news
for the consumer?

Well there are Sparc processors that Sun uses but doesn't manufacture
itself, like UltraSparc, and Sparc processors that others use and build too,
such as the Fujitsu Sparc64. Now I guess the UltraSparc and Sparc64 are
coming together in a common interface.

Yousuf Khan

"Phillip Fayers" wrote in message
...
The SPARC architecture is mainly being pushed upmarket because Sun lost
sight of the low end of the market. Their plan was to develop high end
chips and then scale them down for low cost systems. It hasn't
worked out for them. If they had put a bit more effort into the low
end they would have a larger low end market. Without a healthy low
end market SPARC won't survive at the high end either.

I don't know if Sun went around purposely trying to make an "upmarket" chip
which it could take downmarket; rather Sun was trying to create a general
purpose core that could be used in either "upmarkets" or "downmarkets". It
was late coming out, so by the time it did come out, other processor
families were already equal with it, if not outperforming it. So
unfortunately the only versions of the processors that performed well were
the ones with the huge caches made for the upmarkets. This high-end product
couldn't compete on price in the lower markets, and the low-end versions of
this product were outperformed by the competition.

Besides, there was never any way, or any chance that Sun could've been able
to compete against the Intels and AMDs of the world, simply for the shear
volume they put out. The cost of their processors goes down simply because
of the volume of them. Even if Sun priced their low-end products at exactly
the same price points as Intel or AMD, they wouldn't sell any more of the
products -- there simply isn't enough demand. The x86 market has the whole
Windows market behind it. Windows doesn't run on Sparc.

Yousuf Khan

Yes, Linux withn Wine, www.lindows.com, Softwindows(now gone kaput) come to
mind.


"Alessandro Selli" wrote in message
. ..
Il giorno Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Godzilla così ha scritto:

| I think it means not the captive of any one corporation.
|
|Not true at all. Sun is already if not close to monopoly in the Sparc
|market. I don't know how you define "open" but if you define it like this,
|even Microsoft's Windows is "open"

Do you mean I can have a third-party windou$ OS?


Sandro


--
Bellum se ipsum alet
La guerra nutre se stessa

Livio, Ab urbe condita, XXXIV,9

"Richard L. Hamilton" wrote in
message ...
But more fundamental than that, Sun set up SPARC International, of
which it is just one member (although certainly the most influential),
and gave it both the SPARC trademark (to license to members with compliant
products) and control over the spec. So it ain't SPARC unless an
organization with members other than just Sun says it is.

Now I'm sure that's not commie-pinko enough for some of the GPL ideologues
(nothing wrong with the GPL for some purposes, but the "all information
should be free" fanatics really frost my cookies; if it cost to create it,
whoever did so has a right to profit from it), but it's a damn
sight more open than Intel, or most of the rest of the industry. The
PowerPC probably comes close, in that IBM, Motorola, and Apple were all
involved in that.

Actually more than PowerPC, the really open CPU architectures are MIPS and
ARM. Again, like Sparc International, these two processor families have
licensing houses. They are used mostly in embedded systems these days, such
as set top boxes and PDAs. MIPS licensees include Texas Instruments and AMD.
While ARM licensees include Motorola and Intel (i.e. their Xscale is just an
ARM derivative).

Yousuf Khan