SPARC architecture

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Sparc architecture logo
SUN SPARCstation 4 with Mozilla under CDE
Sun microSPARC II
Sun UltraSPARC
Sun UltraSPARC II

The SPARC architecture ( S calable P rocessor ARC hitecture ) is a microprocessor architecture that is mainly used in Oracle products . There are also other manufacturers, such as Fujitsu Technology Solutions (formerly Fujitsu Siemens Computers).

history

Sun Microsystems developed from 1985 and marketed the first generations of SPARC processors from 1987. In 1989 the not-for-profit organization SPARC International was founded as a point of contact for the further development of the open SPARC architecture.

At the time of development, Sun was already the second largest manufacturer of workstations with the Unix operating system (market share 1985: Apollo Computer 41%, Sun 21%). With the SPARC processor, the company, like many workstation manufacturers at the time, wanted to create a RISC processor architecture that would replace the 68020 and i386 roadrunner processors and would remain competitive for many years. The processors were made by other manufacturers such as Texas Instruments or Fujitsu .

Sun brought out many workstations and servers with its Sun 4 series that used the SPARC processor. But Fujitsu also built SPARC processors into its PrimePower systems up until 2005. In addition to SunOS or Solaris , Linux or the modern BSD variants can also be used on SPARC systems . In 1995 the original 32-bit architecture was expanded to 64-bit and marketed under the name UltraSparc. In addition to additional units, this architecture has a deeper pipeline and some simple SIMD commands ( Visual Instruction Set (VIS) ). The Ultrasparc standard has four main versions so far, the current version is UltraSparc T2 .

The outstanding feature of the architecture is a register file , which originally consisted of 128 32-bit registers. The CPU can only access part of it, usually 32, directly. The CPU sees 24 of these in a window that can be moved using the software (→ register window ). This means that arguments and results of subroutines can be transferred without having to copy registers by moving the window.

The floating point unit can be used as a 32-way, 32-bit, single-precision register, 16-way, 64-bit, double-precision register, or an 8-way, 128-bit, quad-precision register.

The current versions are 32-bit V8 and 64-bit V9. The SPARC V8 is completely Big Endian . The SPARC V9 uses instructions in Big Endian format, but supports both byte orders for data values. This can be switched both at instruction level by using special commands and for entire memory areas by means of an MMU setting. The latter is used in particular when memory areas of devices have to be accessed, such as the PCI bus defined as Little Endian .

A simple version of a SPARC processor called LEON 1 in the hardware description language VHDL is freely available from ESA . Both the design of the UltraSPARC T1 and that of the UltraSPARC T2 were published in 2006 and 2007 under the open source license GPL via the OpenSPARC project and can be downloaded there. The design of the Sun Microsparc has also been published in source code since mid-1990 and is freely usable.

There are also a number of microcontroller implementations (for example from Hitachi ), some of which, however, have a compressed machine code and are therefore not binary compatible.

Since the takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle , SPARC has now belonged to Oracle.

Models

various implementations of the SPARC architecture, including Sun's successful SuperSPARC and UltraSPARC-I:

Sun SPARC microprocessor specification
model Frequency
[MHz]
Architecture
version
year Process
[µm]
Transistors
[millions]
Core
dimension
[mm²]
IO pins Recording
[W]
Voltage
[V]
L1 Dcache
[k]
L1 Icache
[k]
L2 cache
[k]
L3 cache
[k]
SPARC 14.28-40 V7 1987-1992 0.8-1.3 ~ 0.1-1.8 - 160-256 - - 0-128 no no
microSPARC I 50 V8 1992 0.8 0.8 225 288 2.5 5 4th 2 no no
SuperSPARC I 33-65 V8 1992 0.8 3.1 256 293 14.3 5 16 20th 1024 no
microSPARC II 60-125 V8 1992 0.5 2.3 233 321 5 3.3 8th 16 no no
SuperSPARC II 75-90 V8 1994 0.8 3.1 299 - 16 - 16 20th 2048 no
TurboSPARC 170-180 V8 1995 0.35 - - - 7th - 16 16 1024 no
UltraSPARC I 140-200 V9 1995 0.5 5.2 315 521 30th 3.3 16 16 1024 no
UltraSPARC II 250-480 V9 1997 0.25 5.4 156 521 21st 3.3 16 16 8192 no
UltraSPARC IIi 270-650 V9 1998 0.25 5.75 148 370 17.6 1.7 16 16 2048 no
UltraSPARC IIe 400-500 V9 2000 0.18 5.4 - 370 13 1.7 16 16 256 no
UltraSPARC III 600-1200 V9 2001 0.13 29 330 1368 53 1.6 64 32 8192 no
UltraSPARC IIIi 1064-1600 V9 2003 0.13 87.5 206 959 52 1.3 64 32 1024 no
UltraSPARC IV 1050-1350 V9 2004 0.13 66 356 1368 108 1.35 64 32 16384 no
UltraSPARC IV + 1500-2100 V9 2005 0.09 295 336 1368 90 1.1 64 64 2048 32768
UltraSPARC T1 1000-1400 V9 2005 0.09 279 379 1934 79 1.3 8th 16 3072 no
UltraSPARC T2 900-1400 V9 2007 0.065 503 342 1831 95 1.2 8th 16 4096 no
UltraSPARC T2 + 1200-1600 UA2007 2008 0.065 503 342 1831 - - 8th 16 4096 no
UltraSPARC T3 1650 UA2007 2010 0.04 - 371 - 139 - 8th 16 6144 no
UltraSPARC T4 2850-3000 OSA2011 2011 0.04 855 403 - 240 - 16x8 16x8 128x8 no
UltraSPARC T5 3600 OSA2011 2013 0.028 1500 478 - - - 16x16 16x16 128x16 8192
Ross / Bridgepoint SPARC microprocessor specification
HyperSPARC A 55-80 V8 1993 0.5 1.5 - - - 5 no 8th 256 no
HyperSPARC B 90-125 V8 1995 0.4 1.5 - - 25th 5 no 8th 256 no
HyperSPARC C 110-166 V8 1995 0.35 1.5 - - 45.5 5 no 8th 1024 no
HyperSPARC D 180-200 V8 1995 0.35 1.7 - - - 5 16 16 1024 no
Sun / Fujitsu SPARC64 processors
SPARC64 V 1350-2160 V9 2004 0.13 191 290 269 40 1.2 128 128 2048 no
SPARC64 VI 2150-2400 V9 2007 0.09 540 422 - 120 - 128 128 6144 no
SPARC64 VII 2700 V9 2008 0.065 600 445 - 135 - 64 64 6144 no
SPARC64 VIII 2000 V9 2009 0.045 760 513 - 58 - 32 32 4096 no
SPARC64 X 3000 V9 2013 - - - - - - - 32 - 24576

See also

Web links

Commons : Sun SPARC  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Jens Ihlenfeld: OpenSPARC T2: Sun puts UltraSPARC T2 under the GPL. In: Golem.de . December 12, 2007, accessed April 2, 2017 .
  2. http://www.opensparc.net/ . Sun Microsystems. Retrieved July 12, 2009.
  3. Fujitsu launches 'Athena' Sparc64-X servers in Japan . the register. Retrieved February 27, 2013.