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Today Sun introduced the OpenSPARC Internals book, a resource dedicated to supporting the ever-growing global OpenSPARC community with a complete guide to solving complex OpenSPARC programming tasks such as setting up simulation and emulation environments, as well as making changes to the OpenSPARC code (e.g configuring the number of cores or threads, adding extensions, as well as fitting onto an FPGA). The book is intended to act as an indispensable guide and easily accessible resource for academics and hardware developers working on next generation OpenSPARC design projects.

Created by Sun’s OpenSPARC engineers and edited by respected academic David Weaver, the book is available for download in PDF version here. 

I'm just resurfacing after the launch of our UltraSPARC T2 processor—aka, the world's fastest chip, aka, Niagara 2. It was a great success with coverage in well over 100 articles and reports worldwide. Here are a few resources for anyone interested in more information:

Webcast of the live launch event

Jonathan Schwartz's first blog about the launch

Jonathan Schwartz's second blog about the launch

Press release

Online press kit

Microelectronics home page

UltraSPARC T2 product page

OpenSPARC community page

Hope this helps!

At the PODC conference today in Portland, Oregon Marc Tremblay outlined Sun's breakthrough in Transactional Memory. I wasn't at the show, but I'm told that Marc's speech generated a lot of interest. 

Transactional memory, which will be included in Sun's "Rock" processor, offers an elegant solution to the problem of concurrent computing.   The Rock processor and Transactional Memory also should help software developers better take advantage of multi-threaded processors.

Tremblay (photo above) talks about software developers and multi-threaded processors in today's Wall Street Journal: "'So far the software revolution has not happened,' said Marc Tremblay, a Sun senior vice president. If Rock can ease the programming problem, 'we think it's a pretty big deal.'"

Checkout Don Clark's article in today's Wall Street Journal.

For more information on Sun's SPARC products go to: http://www.sun.com/processors/

OK, it's not the same as the 8 MILLION Solaris downloads, but we're pretty happy that the OpenSPARC T1 design has been downloaded more than 5,300 times in the roughly 18 months it's been available. Of course, open source hardware is different from open source software and the OpenSPARC project shows not only Sun's commitment to open IP but also that researchers, chip designers, tools makers and foundries are interested in the many technical breakthroughs embodied in the microprocessor with the most threads—32—of any processor in its class. Sun's OpenSPARC variant—the UltraSPARC T1 processor with CoolThreads technology—is the highest-throughput and most eco-responsible processor created to date.

Interesting to know: Design variations based on OpenSPARC T1 have come from companies such as SimplyRISC and Polaris Micro and the University of California at Santa Cruz has created a Center of Excellence to research computer architecture using OpenSPARC technology.

Congratulations to the entire OpenSPARC community!

You may have read Jonathan's blog entry on the Project Blackbox shake test at UCSD.

I sent a little note to some reporters this morning highlighting the YouTube video.   One reporter, Martin Heller of Infoworld, decided to publish the note directly onto his blog.

While one Project Blackbox is in San Diego getting shaken, another has been touring Canada and Europe.  Paris, the UK, Germany, Switzerland.  Tre settimane fa e' arrivato a Roma.

I'm told that one skeptical UK analyst said as he began a tour of the computer filled shipping container something along the lines of "Ah, there are the mirrors, now where is the smoke?"  But...I'm also told that like many, once this skeptical analyst had a chance to tour the "Box" and hear directly from the Sun team driving the project he moved from a skeptic to a believer.

Now is Martin Heller still a skeptic?....I'm not sure.

In a recent conversation with David Yen, I learned something interesting--and really cool for Sun. A little background: The fourth edition of “Computer Architecture” was released a few months ago. “CA” is the definitive text for teaching state-of-the-art microprocessor design at the university level. It is written by John L. Hennessy, now president of Stanford University, and David A. Patterson, a highly decorated former chair of the Computer Science Department at UC Berkeley.

What two microprocessors do you think these distinguished experts chose to analyze as the epitome of modern CPU design? Sun's Niagara processor and the AMD Opteron! In his foreword, Fred Weber, former CTO of AMD, says the book “highlights the AMD Opteron and SUN Niagara as the best examples of the x86 and SPARC (RISC) architectures brought into the new world of multiprocessing and system-on-a-chip architecture, thus grounding the art and science in real-world commercial examples.”

This kind of acknowledgement says a lot: Twenty years after its inception SPARC(R) technology remains at the forefront of technology. Very cool!