Sun opens up the UltraSPARC

Sun have just announced that they are opening up the UltraSPARC design, according to the FAQ we be getting source code (Verilog), a simulator, ISA specs and Solaris sourcecode to drive it.

I think this is a wonderful move and I applaud Sun for the decision to give their groundbreaking T1 design to the world. I most certainly would like one, it has sweet specs. So congratulations Sun on open sourcing the SPARC

Obligatory links: http://www.sun.com/processors/opensparc/faq.jsp http://opensparc.sunsource.net/nonav/index.html

I still dont like sun for their comment a couple months ago: "The only OSes that are going to survive are Windows, Solaris, and maybe red hat".

I still dont like sun for their comment a couple months ago: "The only OSes that are going to survive are Windows, Solaris, and maybe red hat". Meh... their stupid comment ought to be forgiven after they've done something like this. Besides, who hasn't said something stupid in their lives?

Sun has a particularly strong track-record of it, however.

Maybe. The telling will be in the open source license. Having the "right to hack" in your garage is very different than making a technology sufficiently open to allow it to evolve in the marketplace.

Don't forget, too, that many of those "hardware" mpeg engines and hard drive controllers are actually specialized single chip SPARC processors. Take one ULTRASPARC, strip out the cache and complicated controllers and add an array of bit slice pipelines and you could make one very powerful graphics engine...

that's pretty damn cool. thanks for the link.