Andreas Bechtolsheim

SPARCstation 1: beyond the 3M horizon

Not too long ago, the workstation of the future was nicknamed the 3M machine: 1 MIPS, 1 megabyte, and 1 megapixel. The 4M (+ 1 megaflop) machine and 5M (+ 1 megavectors per second) machine weren’t even contemplated. Indeed, thoughts of anything more powerful added three more Ms: megadollars, megaspace, and megawatts. Yet, when Sun introduced SPARC in early 1987, it became apparent that the technology was in hand to build workstations that would by far exceed the goals of the original 3M machine.

Sun's SPARCstation 1: a workstation for the 1990s

The architecture and features of the SPARCstation 1 are described and compared with those of other workstations and PCs of approximately the same cost. The heart of the machine is implemented using seven custom CMOS gate arrays plus a single-chip SPARC integer unit and a single-chip SPARC floating-point unit. The architecture of SPARCstation 1 reflects the use of CMOS technology, especially in the design of the SBus, which is SPARCstation 1s memory and I/O expansion interconnect. As a processing engine, SPARCstation 1 provides the user with 12.5 MIPS, 1.4 MFLOPS, and 64 MB of memory. The SBus provides the means for connecting peripheral devices such as IPI (interprocessor interrupt) drives and FDDI interfaces. The SBus accommodates these devices by having a peak bandwidth of 80 MB/s and a sustained bandwidth in the SPARCstation 1 implementation of approximately 25 to 30 MB/s. An optional graphics accelerator, the GX, can render almost 5 Mvectors/s.<<ETX>>

Scaling to PetaFlops

This presentation discusses the myriad of challenges involved in getting to true Petaflop performance, including the CPUs, memory, interconnect, and software.

Concept To System: How Sun Microsystems Created SPARCstationl Using LSI Logic’s ASIC System Technology

On April 12, 1989, Sun Microsystems announced SPARCstation™ 1, the world’s first all ASIC desktop workstation. SPARCstation 1 combines more power and features than any other desktop system. This white paper tells the SPARCstation 1 story, from concept to system. It is a story of cooperation and commitment between two companies, Sun and LSI Logic. It is also a story of the power of ASIC technology and the design methodology necessary to develop the workstation that will change the future of desktop computing.