Sun Open-Sourcing UltraSPARC Design
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Dec 06, 2005 08:29 PM
from the why-shouldn't-it-work-for-hardware-too dept.
from the why-shouldn't-it-work-for-hardware-too dept.
AKAImBatman writes "While everyone was busy with the holiday season, Sun Microsystems quietly announced the start of the OpenSPARC project. Unlike previous CPUs that were based on the "Open" SPARC specifications (such as LEON), Sun is releasing the complete Verilog source code to their latest and greatest microprocessor. Their current time frame for releasing the source code to the public is in March of 2006. Given their success with the OpenSolaris project, it seems that this is likely to be more than just vaporware. So get out your Virtex FPGAs and your Verilog compilers, and let's get ready to hack some hardware!"
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too far? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:too far? (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I understand of patent law, if someone else wants to distribute hardware, they'll still need to get patent licenses.
IOW, Sun is becoming an IP company of a rare sort.
Re:too far? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dennis Clarke
http://www.blastwave.org/ [blastwave.org]
Re:Put down the crackpipe (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you should start comparing prices, then:
So, it would appear that Sun's support prices are actually lower rather than beating Red Hat's. In fact, for one of Sun's cheapest server systems, you can get Platinum support for $2304 for three years. Platinum support includes both 24/7 software support and 24/7 two-hour response time on-site hardware support. That's cheaper then one year of Red Hat's software-only 24/7 support.
Again, compare prices:
So, the Sun server may not be as cheap as building a system out of spare parts lying around in your basement, but it really is pretty cheap compared to the competition in that space.
Re:Put down the crackpipe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:too far? (Score:5, Informative)
OpenSolaris has an OSI license. It is called the CDDL. Welcome to open source.
Sun offers the Sun ONE Studio tools for free. Vastly superior to GCC in every measurable way. Of course that is my opinion based on years of code crunching. The fact is that these are available for free. Download and go.
I believe that the source is being made open also.
Absolutely. All of the components under the CDDL are open. Have fun.
More on the way.
Heck, Sun just spent FIVE years working on an entirely new filesystem called ZFS and they released it and open sourced it at the same time. How cool is that?
See : http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-11/sunf lash.20051130.1.html [sun.com]
I have heard that
see : http://www.redhat.com/sundown/ [redhat.com]
Why is there an IBM logo on that page? Why is there an edition RHEL for POWER but not for Sparc ? Why does it say in big BOLD graphics there "Migrate to Linux with IBM + Red Hat"?
Now go look at : http://www.redhat.com/en_us/USA/rhel/compare/serve r/ [redhat.com]
The absolute cheapest edition is $349 and the top is $2499 !!
I can get Solaris for FREE.
For UltraSparc or for Intel or AMD Opteron.
The cost of an OPTIONAL software support contract is less than 34 cents a day.
I ought to know
See my blog : http://www.blastwave.org/dclarke/blog/pivot/entry. php?id=107 [blastwave.org]
While you're surfing, look at the three guys at :
http://www.novell.com/linux/unixtolinux/ [novell.com]
They are all parked on a bench outside the IT Directors office waiting to tell how reiserfs screwed up their data again and they lost the corporate database because of some messed up kernel patch.
But that is just me guessing.
Sure. I agree with "cheap".
Show me a 64-bit Opteron that is faster, cooler and less costly than a SunFire X2100.
Really. Anyone can make junk that is cheap and monsters that are massively expensive.
Show me a 64-bit machine that has more horsepower than an 8-core 1.2GHz SunFire T1000 or a 64-bit AMD Opteron machine with more horsepower than the SunFire X2100.
For less money.
Oh, and the Opteron gear has to be certified to run Windows as well as Linux as well as a real UNIX.
Good luck.
Take a long hard stare at my blog from a little while ago
http://www.blastwave.org/dclarke/blog/pivot/entry. php?id=113 [blastwave.org]
I count, what? 16 e
Re:too far? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, this means that you have more people trying out different things.
Sun then takes the most interesting stuff, and puts it in their next ge chips.
How is this (getting people to improve your product) a dumb idea?
Big Machines !! (Score:4, Funny)
Thats going to give us a nice biiig processor
Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
The roadmap is clear (Score:5, Insightful)
These new servers absolutely rock, and at superb prices.
I once had the pleasure of a 4-way Opteron v40z with a development version of 64-bit Solaris 10. It was a screamer, especially compared to our 4-way Dell P4 Xeon box, and 64-bit.
It was plenty fast enough to host 4 zones and several developers working on KDE, gcc and all manner of other stuff.
At last, Sun looks like it's turning the corner (despite the best efforts of some of its PHBs - no names mentioned).
Good luck Sun.
Implementability (Score:5, Interesting)
Also speed of FPGAs is a huge let-down, unless a design takes advantage of their structure. There is no reason to believe that the processor will be designed for FPGAs... It is likely to be therefore very slow, even if you can implement it.
Re:Implementability (Score:5, Interesting)
Contrary to TFA's claim, I suspect for a lot of people, Sun's previous attempt at open-sourcing a core (to the microSPARC) would be a lot more interesting if you wanted to put the design on an FPGA (unfortunately, I'm not at all sure this is still available). I'm not sure how well it would work on an FPGA either, but at least it stands a whole lot better chance, and it's probably still plenty of CPU for most typical FPGA-based designs.
Then again, www.opencores.org, www.fpga4fun.com, etc., already have quite a number of CPU cores available, many without the likelihood of patent problems, and such that are likely to accompany using a SPARC core. Better still, quite a few of these have already been tested in various FPGAs and a few have been put into ASICs as well.
--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
ok, I'm convinced (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ok, I'm convinced (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure it may not be the best machine to use if you want to play Quake 4 or Half Life 2, but for scalable multithreaded apps, it really is quite impressive.
Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog (Score:5, Interesting)
And now you have a pretty good idea of what's in store for tomorrow. (Pay careful attention to the "open market for parts" comment - we're planning on delivering an extraordinary surprise to the industry. No sense in letting the software folks have all the fun...)
PowerPC and Arm might get cheaper (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now Xilinx and Altera make user-configurable FPGA processors. Most of the processor is fixed, but you can encode what happens for special instructions. Here's one: http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon_solutions/
Now if Sun is giving away the processor, there's no reason for you to pay more for a PowerPC-based design -- someone will make a "cheapo" FPGA-extendable UltraSPARC.
I'm only half joking, so don't mod me funny (Score:5, Funny)
woohoo! (Score:5, Insightful)
And I hope this will "sparc" a revival of the sparc acrhictecture!
HP should've done the same with the Alpha architecture instead of letting it die a forgotten death. What a shame!
who(m) does it help? (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose that once we have open source versions of: schematic capture, synthesis, floorplanning, layout, timing, validation, and mask generation, then we can focus on an open source process and an open source fab. Not bloody likely!!!
I think the biggest benefit here is that now both hackers and Universities now have a REAL architecture to study in their classrooms. I'll definitely be on the prowl for resumes of students who studied real microprocessor Verilog in college, and not simple ISCAS circuits or architectures from the 1980's.
Listening to Open Graphics Project? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FP! (Score:5, Funny)
Frame Pointer
Stack Pointer
ummmm...
What's TP??
Oh yeah
Toilet Paper - aka SCO Legal Documentation.
Re:Pardon my ignorance... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pardon my ignorance... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FPGAs are key (Score:5, Informative)
1) The ASIC runs at 1GHz+ frequency, the V4 implementation would run around 300MHz at best and cost over $10k for the FPGA alone.
2) Most FPGAs block-RAM and LUT-based RAM can be dual-ported at most, this is problematic for register files where a dozen registers may be concurrently accessed during any given cycle. This would require either register duplication or time-multiplexed register access and a corresponding down-clocking of everything else.
3) Logic is expended pretty fast if you do stuff like 64x64 multipliers using logic only. Sure, there are dedicated multipliers in most modern low-cost FPGAs but these are hard-wired to handle DSP-centric MAC operations.
4) People are upset with desktop CPU's power usage but building similar CPUs on FPGAs would require many times more power to achieve the same performance since FPGA's switch fabric and general-purpose programmable elements have way more parasitic capacitance than ASICs' internal hard-wired traces and circuits. With ASIC, 1M logic gates is only ~6M transistors but a ~1M gate-equivalent FPGA with switch fabric and configuration bits goes beyond 50M transistors with much longer routing delays.
FPGAs are not particularly suitable for general-purpose processing where the system has extensive subsystem interdependencies and shared elements. Where they can truly shine is in applications where the data flow is mostly regular and where processing can be broken down into well-defined self-contained stages like telecom, crypto and DSP. Another area where FPGAs can shine is hard-realtime where they can have dedicated logic to handle time-critical events with 100% deterministic deadlines, unlike modern CPUs and OSes where realtime applications have to put up with unpredictable branch mispredicts, cache misses, preemption, out-of-order execution, etc.
That said, the UltraSPARC's verilog source should make for really interesting reading for logic and digital system engineers and academics like myself. This move makes a lot of sense: CPU designers need to hire new talent and this new talent needs to learn about common practice in real-world designs to be of any use or they'll spend most of their first months just catching up. With a real-world design in the wild, CPU-designer job postings could ask people to specify which architectural components they would like to improve and the interviews could steer towards presenting those improvements instead of often irrelevant technicalities.
Re:How is this something new? (Score:5, Informative)