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I had some SPARC hardware when it was already old, that I got off of eBay. Tons of hackers did in the 90s/00s. What was "very good" about the hardware? That

I had some SPARC hardware when it was already old, that I got off of eBay. Tons of hackers did in the 90s/00s. What was "very good" about the hardware? That it was RISC?

iso1210 5y ago
64 bit processor in 1995. AMD64 wasn't released until 2000. From memory Sun/Solaris kit supported far more memory than anything X86 based.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  And multi-CPU/socket. The SPARCcenter 2000/2000E had 20 sockets in ~1995: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun4d#SPARCcenter_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun4d#SPARCcenter_2000
fnord77 5y ago
It had ECC memory and networking built in. which at the time I think was hard to find on PC hardware. And the networking just worked. I remember trying to get ethernet to work on a PC with early linux. Nightmare.
tw04 5y ago
Just now Intel is finally starting to get some of the RAS features sparc + Solaris had back in the 90s. Sun Sparc boxes were far more robust to hardware failure/recovery than their x86 counterparts from what I remember. https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19620-01/805-4453/6j47hg5qf/index.html https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19620-01/805-4453/6j47hg5qf/inde...
inkyoto 5y ago
> What was "very good" about the hardware? The switched memory architecture. Which was a boon to running Oracle and transaction processing monitors (e.g. Tuxedo) – or, anything that required large amounts of memory and the high memory bandwitdth, but did not require the highest performant CPU. Also, an extensive network of partners and resellers that made it easy to purchase a SPARC system, service and upgrade it was also a major factor. If one had the money, it was just too easy to buy a SPARC box. > That it was RISC? That is where Sun was consistenly lagging behind other RISC vendors until (roughly) the arrival of the UltraSPARC-II CPU. Before then, Alpha, POWER and PA-RISC CPU's consistently outperformed current SPARC / UltraSPARC-I designs. Another part of the problem was that the highly optimising Sun C/C++ compiler was very expensive, and GCC could not generate the code that would be as efficient for quite a while – not until after GCC folks rewrote the register allocator (GCC v2.95 circa?). The problem partially stemmed from the SPARC's windowed register file design. GCC has eventually caught up and has been generating fast (Ultra-)SPARC code since then.

I had some SPARC hardware when it was already old, that I got off of eBay. Tons of hackers did in the 90s/00s. What was "very good" about the hardware? That it was RISC?

iso1210 5y ago

64 bit processor in 1995. AMD64 wasn't released until 2000. From memory Sun/Solaris kit supported far more memory than anything X86 based.

throw0101a 5y ago
And multi-CPU/socket. The SPARCcenter 2000/2000E had 20 sockets in ~1995: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun4d#SPARCcenter_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun4d#SPARCcenter_2000

fnord77 5y ago

It had ECC memory and networking built in. which at the time I think was hard to find on PC hardware. And the networking just worked. I remember trying to get ethernet to work on a PC with early linux. Nightmare.

tw04 5y ago

Just now Intel is finally starting to get some of the RAS features sparc + Solaris had back in the 90s. Sun Sparc boxes were far more robust to hardware failure/recovery than their x86 counterparts from what I remember. https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19620-01/805-4453/6j47hg5qf/index.html https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19620-01/805-4453/6j47hg5qf/inde...

inkyoto 5y ago

> What was "very good" about the hardware? The switched memory architecture. Which was a boon to running Oracle and transaction processing monitors (e.g. Tuxedo) – or, anything that required large amounts of memory and the high memory bandwitdth, but did not require the highest performant CPU. Also, an extensive network of partners and resellers that made it easy to purchase a SPARC system, service and upgrade it was also a major factor. If one had the money, it was just too easy to buy a SPARC box. > That it was RISC? That is where Sun was consistenly lagging behind other RISC vendors until (roughly) the arrival of the UltraSPARC-II CPU. Before then, Alpha, POWER and PA-RISC CPU's consistently outperformed current SPARC / UltraSPARC-I designs. Another part of the problem was that the highly optimising Sun C/C++ compiler was very expensive, and GCC could not generate the code that would be as efficient for quite a while – not until after GCC folks rewrote the register allocator (GCC v2.95 circa?). The problem partially stemmed from the SPARC's windowed register file design. GCC has eventually caught up and has been generating fast (Ultra-)SPARC code since then.