Sun Opening Microprocessor Technology 54
bjb writes "The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Sun plans to announce later today that they are going to distribute designs of their microprocessors to outside developers for free. Similar to the Java license that recently came out, you can modify it, but if you sell you have to pay. The schedule appears that they will release the PicoJava first, the 32-bit SPARC technology by the summer, and the 64-bit UltraSPARC technology by the end of the year." This
article requires a paid login to read- what a crock. Anyway,
someone please submit a free link.
Update: 03/02 12:09 by S :
News.com is now carrying the story. It's interesting to
see how this move fits into Forbes' analysis
Sun's strategy of getting attention with buzz around
Java, Jini, and now Sparc Processors, in order to attack
the very high-end more effectively. In the world of
Starfire and
Serengeti (supercomputers), Sun is probably telling
the truth when they say that Linux does not compete with them
(long term).
Confusion over "open"ness (Score:1)
"The maneuver is not unlike the open-source movement"
Oh, really? Obviously, it's completely unlike the open-source movement. I think that whoever is running OSI these days needs to run another publicity/identity blitz so that people stop confusing these fakes with the real thing.
it's also on news.com (Score:2)
Its also on CNN... (Score:2)
And Sun still won't care. (Score:1)
And Sun still won't care. (Score:1)
Hardware doesn't want to be free... (Score:1)
OSS proliferates because everyone has easy access to the means to manufacture (compile) the code. OSH will have a harder time because it has to be physically produced, and there is no way that you'll ever get a hardware company to produce hardware for free. It won't happen.
All this being said, I think this (releasing the designs of chips) is the closest you'll get to actual OSH. However, this may make products like UltraPenguin better, since the coders can take a look inside the chip...
Bravo to Sun for doing this. I hope more hardware manufacturers follow this model.
roll your own? (Score:1)
Sun gets it (Score:1)
No, it's not "pure" open source, but it *does* increase one's freedom WHILE insuring Sun get's their due if you sell it. That's the important thing.
Will it work? Time will tell. I'm hopeful.
Press release (Score:1)
The release hasn't appeared on Sun's web site yet - their site normally gets updated late in the day.
Personal gripe - I submitted this story 5 hours ago with some extra info - not some 'paid subscription' junk, but did it get posted? No.
Btw, at the register, they also have this article titled Intel, Sun schmoozing for a chip cruising [theregister.co.uk]. The info is rather basic. Apparantly Microsoft is pissed off...
Hardware doesn't want to be free... (Score:1)
Anyway, ARM is the current champion of chip IP. They don't make, or get made, any chips themselves. Instead anyone can get a liscence to make them, or to make designs with ARMs. About 50 million ARM 'chips' were made last year, up from 10m the year before. ARM are expected to capture 70% of the digital mobile phone market this year... 3Com are going to start using them in network cards, and they're already appearing in hard-discs and stuff.
It's not particularly sexy, but ARM is worth nearly $2bn, a 300% increase since they floated a year ago. They're doing pretty damn well ^-^
However, ARM do charge an upfront fee. This cost for the ARM 9 is rumoured to be around $5-10million. The cost per chip is about $0.10 to $0.20 though. Incidentally, liscencing Sun's Jini costs nothing up front, and has an individual cost of about $0.20, with a max of $250,000 I think.
And Sun still won't care. (Score:1)
With regards to the 3.2GBps system bus/interconnect, what were you referring to? The main memory bus on a processor board is somewhere around that level. However, the main data bus is nearly 13GByte/s and about 15GB on the newer, slightly revised ones. It also has a 6GByte/s IO bus.
Maybe I'm dense, but... (Score:1)
The larger designs provide valuable insight into the state of the art in various techniques and technologies at the time of the chips design.
This is valuable stuff. The fact that Joe Blow can't make use of it is not the point anymore than the fact that Joe Blow can't actually do anything useful with the source code provided by OpenSource software projects. Most people type download binary code. Some people download source code and type make. Relatively few download the source code and make non-trivial modifications. It takes more than the availibility of a compiler and source code to do so.
Linux will catch up at the high end (Score:1)
Surely this should be short term? Yes, at the moment, Solaris scales better than Linux, but for how long? I've personally run Linux an an Ultra Enterprise 4000, and UltraPenguin [linuz.cz] runs on the E10K ("StarFire"). OK, so Linux only currently scales to 16 CPUs, but given access to appropriate hardware that'll improve. Apart from anything else, it's very rare to have a whole StarFire configured as a single domain anyway. We have 4 here, and the largest single domain has (I think) 22 CPUs.
The point is, yes, Solaris is currently a much better choice at the high end than Linux, but Linux has consistently pushed upwards for the last few years, and it'll catch up with the commercial Unix vendors (including Sun) in a few years time. Yes, Sun and the others will have moved on by then, but my guess is Linux will push into the high end quicker than the high end will advance.
You're crazy. (Score:1)
Maybe I'm dense, but... (Score:1)
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
does this obsolete freedom cpu?? (Score:1)
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
FHF????? (Score:1)
Eric
Many CPU performance penalties (Score:1)
> so you could brag that linux scales well on 64-processor machines (that very, very few people own)?
It seems to me that you could select the 'CPU Count' your kernel supports as a kernel compile option. I'm not much of a kernel hacker, and I can see how it could make a mess of some code, but it could be done. I can just see the options: Uniprocessor, 1-4 CPUs, 1-16 CPUs, or 1-64 CPUs. The only performance drawback would be when a kernel from a system with lots of CPUs is used on a system with only one or two. Oh, and when you set up a system you would need to put the right kernel on it to take proper advantage of the number of CPUs you have.
Eric
open source hardware (Score:1)
They'll need to give away PicoJava (Score:1)
And you can thank RMS. (Score:1)
Thank ESR, BSD and the Mozilla project for proving open source is compatible with commercial products. Not free but not proprietary either
Award for pragmatism. (Score:1)
I made a new Samovar award for this Sun's move:
March awards [sunysb.edu]
I forgot the text: (Score:1)
technology - Linux. It opens everything: Java, Jini, Solaris, Sparc and PicoJava. With only very small exception:
you may not redistribute Sun technologies without passing compatibility tests and paying royalty. That is what is
called freedom in Linux world. The early but strong sound that Linux should fire back was made few weeks ago by
Stallman. Maybe most of us don't want to shed blood in the crusade for the freedom, but it seems that this small
article defines most of what will happens in industry the next decade. In history pragmatism always wins over
ideology, but we still don't know which approach is more pragmatic. We can't predict how Linux and Sun will
divide the market but it is certain that everybody who can't open the source code will be out of business very
soon.
http://www.ecsl.cs.sunysb.edu/~andrew/awards/in
non-hardware use for Sun chip design (Score:1)
They'll need to give away PicoJava (Score:1)
Future problems? (Score:1)
but OTOH:
- Anybody saw any license?
- Should anybody look at their data to find out that he/she can't ever do anything without getting in trouble with Sun?
- Can Sun claim any chip designed by someone that saw their desings as derivative work?
- How many designers/companies will be sued by Sun in the next years?
cheap (Score:1)
Maybe I'm dense, but... (Score:1)
Look at Sunsite (Score:1)
Fortuna favet fatuis (Fortuna favors fools, and most of them run windows)
Look at Sunsite (Score:1)