3 ms·
From this perspective, SPARC is almost equally exotic as Itanium, and provides sufficient architectural diversity in the unlikely case that it is needed in the
by chasil 3y ago
From this perspective, SPARC is almost equally exotic as Itanium, and provides sufficient architectural diversity in the unlikely case that it is needed in the future.
SPARC also actually had market success, which cannot be said for Itanium.
- kaashif 3y agoAlso you can buy a SPARC server for very cheap on eBay, less than a hundred bucks in many cases. Shipping is usually more expensive than the item itself. There are thousands or more of those things out there.
- chasil 3y agoOracle also offers free SPARC cores from the former "Niagra" line. The T2 has vastly better FPU performance than the T1. https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t2-page.html https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t2-pag... https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t1-page.html https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t1-pag... It is doubtful that Intel would ever consider doing such a thing with Itanium.
- meepmorp 3y agoYou can buy new SPARC servers from Fujitsu: https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/unix/sparc/ https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/un... I believe they develop their own chip designs.
- sillywalk 3y agoI'm not sure if they're "new". It looks like those servers use the SPARC64 XII, from 2017-18 "Fujitsu is going to continue Fujitsu SPARC M12 server sales until fiscal 2029 and support services until fiscal 2034." [0] [0] https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/unix/sparc/key-reports/roadmap/ https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/un...