4 ms·

Does anyone know the license for SPARC-V8? I would imagine it would be important to use an open ISA for such a strategic project.

tyingq 8y ago
It's mostly open. There are some annual dues you have to pay, which range from very low for academia, to 5 figures/year for commerical manufacturers. https://sparc.org/faq/ https://sparc.org/faq/
- snvzz 8y ago
  This is insane. With this in mind, why would they not use RISC-V? My better guess is that they started it a long time ago. Long enough for RISC-V not to be in usable condition. Hopefully, they'll redo the frontend.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    At scale, it's much cheaper than, say, ARM, where you pay a percentage of revenue based royalty.
    - snvzz 8y ago
      Yes, and it likely made sense if risc-v wasn't ready back when they started this project.
  - nickpsecurity 8y ago
    SPARC already has an ecosystem thanks to Sun/Oracle. Gaisler did open implementation, Leon3. Sun/Oracle did T1 and T2. Registration to say it was SPARC compatible was only $99 when I looked at it years ago. My only question was why the heck isn't someone cranking them out for security or FOSS markets? Didn't get a chance to find out. Now we have RISC-V chips being developed with lots of companies getting behind it. Still easier to get ahold of SPARC chips, though. I'll also add that quite a few projects in academia used SPARC. OpenPiton being one that might justify using SPARC over RISC-V, esp if NUMA machine. :) http://parallel.princeton.edu/piton/# http://parallel.princeton.edu/piton/#
    - HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
      RISC-V is getting quite the ecosystem, though. IIRC, an effort made by Western Digital has made it possible to cross-compile stuff for RISC-V. Debian works just fine on RISC-V silicon. Right now the big thing seems to be getting real-time, hardware-supported JavaScript processing working so that the modern web works on it well.
      - tambourine_man 8y ago
        >real-time, hardware-supported JavaScript processing You mean JIT, right? The benefits of being interpreted falls flat when, in practice, everyone needs to run a highly tuned just in time compiler.
        HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
        Yes, that. Words were failing me, as was Google.
      - tyingq 8y ago
        The cross compiler looks like it was mostly contributions from SiFive, not WD. WD uses it, and references it.
Symmetry 8y ago
There are actually a few open source SPARC implementations, including the first two Niagra revisions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC#Open_source_implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC#Open_source_implementati...

tyingq 8y ago

It's mostly open. There are some annual dues you have to pay, which range from very low for academia, to 5 figures/year for commerical manufacturers. https://sparc.org/faq/ https://sparc.org/faq/

snvzz 8y ago
This is insane. With this in mind, why would they not use RISC-V? My better guess is that they started it a long time ago. Long enough for RISC-V not to be in usable condition. Hopefully, they'll redo the frontend.
- tyingq 8y ago
  At scale, it's much cheaper than, say, ARM, where you pay a percentage of revenue based royalty.
  - snvzz 8y ago
    Yes, and it likely made sense if risc-v wasn't ready back when they started this project.
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  SPARC already has an ecosystem thanks to Sun/Oracle. Gaisler did open implementation, Leon3. Sun/Oracle did T1 and T2. Registration to say it was SPARC compatible was only $99 when I looked at it years ago. My only question was why the heck isn't someone cranking them out for security or FOSS markets? Didn't get a chance to find out. Now we have RISC-V chips being developed with lots of companies getting behind it. Still easier to get ahold of SPARC chips, though. I'll also add that quite a few projects in academia used SPARC. OpenPiton being one that might justify using SPARC over RISC-V, esp if NUMA machine. :) http://parallel.princeton.edu/piton/# http://parallel.princeton.edu/piton/#
  - HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
    RISC-V is getting quite the ecosystem, though. IIRC, an effort made by Western Digital has made it possible to cross-compile stuff for RISC-V. Debian works just fine on RISC-V silicon. Right now the big thing seems to be getting real-time, hardware-supported JavaScript processing working so that the modern web works on it well.
    - tambourine_man 8y ago
      >real-time, hardware-supported JavaScript processing You mean JIT, right? The benefits of being interpreted falls flat when, in practice, everyone needs to run a highly tuned just in time compiler.
      - HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
        Yes, that. Words were failing me, as was Google.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      The cross compiler looks like it was mostly contributions from SiFive, not WD. WD uses it, and references it.

Symmetry 8y ago

There are actually a few open source SPARC implementations, including the first two Niagra revisions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC#Open_source_implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC#Open_source_implementati...