The First SPARC Workstation... and The Future

[Sun Microsystems Logo]

The First SPARC Workstation... and the Future

Abstract:

When former Sun Microsystems employees gather for reunions, stories formerly only known to a small group of original inventors will often become known. One such story was the creation of the first SPARC based desktop workstation. This story was referenced in an IEEE publication from 2014.

[Sign outside Xerox Palo Alto Research Center]

The Workstation and Xerox Parc

Xerox had a research center in Palo Alto California, which was decades ahead of its time. Xerox, a corporation built around document processing, conceptualized the modern computer, and inspired an industry.

 

[Alto I Computer System, Xerox (PARC), US, 1973, courtesy flickr]

A tale of inspiration

Sun co-founder and chief hardware designer Andy Bechtolsheim recalls spending a lot of time at Xerox Parc as an unpaid consultant during his graduate student days. These days, the position might have been considered an internship, but in those more informal times, Bechtolsheim recalls, it was more like an invitation to hang around, and he did so as much as possible, mostly testing chip design tools in development. At the time, Parc researchers did their jobs using Parc technology—like the Alto computer, with its bitmapped display and Ethernet connectivity. “That’s where the idea of building a personal workstation for engineers and scientists originated," said Bechtolsheim. "It was obvious even as a grad student that the world needed such a product, particularly for engineers who wanted to do chip design or board design.”

 

The First Workstations

He wanted one for himself, but Xerox wasn’t turning it into a product for engineers. So he built it himself using mostly off-the-shelf parts. That attempt turned into the Sun workstation. 

Sun co-founder Vinod Khosla reported that when he met Bechtolsheim and expressed interest in the technology, Bechtolsheim offered it to him at his standard licensing fee—US $10 000. Khosla said he told Bechtolsheim “I want you, not your technology. I don’t want the golden egg, I want the goose.”

For its first official week of existence in 1982, Sun Microsystems was "Sun Workstation." That was until the founders figured out that nobody knew what a workstation was.

The very first Sun workstations delivered to a major customer in May 1982 didn’t run Unix; instead, they were used as IBM 360 terminal emulators.

[Sun 100 desktop workstation spotted at Heinz Nixdorf Museums Forum in Paderborn, Germany]

Sun-1 Motorola 68000 Workstations

The very first workstations did not include graphics, but included an embedded UNIX Operating System. The Sun 1 "workstation was based on the Stanford University SUN workstation designed by Andy Bechtolsheim (advised by Vaughan Pratt and Forrest Baskett), a graduate student and co-founder of Sun Microsystems."

[Sun 2/50 diskless workstation]

 Sun-2 Motorola 68010 Workstations

The Sun-2 "series of UNIX workstations and servers was launched by Sun Microsystems in November 1983.^[1] As the name suggests, the Sun-2 represented the second generation of Sun systems, superseding the original Sun-1 series. The Sun-2 series used a 10 MHz Motorola 68010 microprocessor with a proprietary Sun-2 Memory Management Unit (MMU), which enabled it to be the first Sun architecture to run a full virtual memory UNIX implementation, SunOS 1.0, based on 4.1BSD."

[A Sun 3/60 workstation with disk and tape]

Sun-3 Motorola 68020 & 68030 Workstations

The Sun-3 is a series of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched on September 9, 1985.^[1] The Sun-3 series are VMEbus-based systems similar to some of the earlier Sun-2 series, but using the Motorola 68020 microprocessor, in combination with the Motorola 68881 floating-point co-processor (optional on the Sun 3/50) and a proprietary Sun MMU.

[SPARC Logo, courtesy SPARC International]

 SPARC Workstations Considered

The development project that created a workstation based on the SPARC processor only happened because Bechtolsheim went rogue. Bechtolsheim tells the story: “The company was building Motorola-processor based workstations, and Motorola wasn’t keeping up CPU development. Meanwhile, Bill Joy convinced the company that we should use the SPARC chip. By ‘86 Sun was shipping its first SPARC server. By ‘87, there was a discussion—should we put this into a workstation. But the VP of engineering thought this was lunatic, too much risk. Sun at that point was a public company. As a public company, people get instantaneously conservative and make decisions the way Digital Equipment Corp. would make a decision, which wasn’t quick.

But Bechtolsheim thought the risk was worth it, in part because he was worried about what Steve Jobs was doing with his then-new company, Next. “I knew what was going on at Next, because I had a friend who worked there, and I grew concerned that they were building a better product. They were using the [Motorola] 68000 [microprocessor], so I wanted to have a product with a faster CPU, because in terms of cost/performance there’s nothing better than a faster chip."

[SPARCStation 1+]

The First SPARC Workstation

So Bechtolsheim informally split from Sun in 1987, starting a separate corporation called Unisun. The moniker was intended to give the impression that the new business was going to go after the university market, and not Sun's regular business customers, but, said Bechtolsheim, it was always intended to be a general purpose workstation.

Khosla, who by then had left Sun to join venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, funded the venture. "We agreed to fund Andy to essentially rip-off Sun technology,” Khosla recalls.  “We told the board we were going to do this whether they liked it or not, but they could buy back at cost," that is, purchase the company and its intellectual property for the amount of Kleiner's investment.

 “Three or six months after we got going Sun decided it should indeed be a Sun product line, and it came out in 1989; it was Sun’s best selling workstation.”

Epilogue

The irony of history is sometimes hard to get past. One can sometimes have the most advanced hardware and software solutions, but not know how to market it for economic advantage... thus was the case for Xerox. Wrapping off-the-shelf products with a clean software design with built in Ethernet Interfaces resulted in the creation of an entirely new class of computing systems and ultimately The Internet. With the advent of The Internet, The Market transitioned from Workstations to Servers... ironically, often by stacking Sun Workstation "pizza boxes" on a shelf in a rack, connecting their embedded Ethernet cards. Sun used to say "The Network Is The Computer", and they were right.

[Oracle Logo, Courtesy Oracle Corporation]

SPARC Today

Today, the highest performing general purpose microprocessor on the market continues to be SPARC. Oracle, a software company, now owns a proverbial "Golden Egg", with Fujitsu being the other. June 2016 marked the time when Oracle resumed shipping commodity competitive systems based upon  the SPARC S7. September 2017, Oracle cut SPARC "Core" Team employees. SPARC firmware continues to roll out, providing the most secure microprocessor platform on the market.

SPARC Tomorrow

Also in September 2017, once again released the fastest processor on the market - the SPARC M8. As 2020 approaches, the market looks forward to what will most likely be the fastest processor on the market, the SPARC M8+. With SPARC stunning performance, the market debates where the proverbial "Goose" still lives.

Motorola's FreeScale to be acquired by NXP

[Motorola Logo, courtesy Wikipedia]

Abstract:
The Scientific, Education, Engineering, and Server microcomputer markets were once dominated with Motorola based processors. Motorola created the necessary parts for computing platforms, from the power transistors required for switching power supplies, to the plastic coated low-cost semiconductor format which became industry standard, to analog television screens needed for human interaction, to digital HDTV digital screens for modern day human interaction, all the way down to the Central Processor unit with all their additional support chips. Today, we mark the day where America's innovation company, spun-off as Freescale by Motorola, was acquired by a Dutch competitor NXP.

[68000 microprocessor die, courtesy Wikipedia]

History:
A short history of Motorola dating to 2009 can be seen in this PDF. There is not significant concentration on Motorola's contribution to the Computer Industry, so this article completes a short summary of Motorola semiconductor & microprocessor innovations.
1928 - Motorola was started as in Illinois, USA as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation
1947 - Motorola developed their first Television (a requirement for computer monitors)
1949 - Motorola opened up their first Solid State research lab
1955 - The first high powered transistor (core of computer switching power supplies)
1963 - Worlds first rectangular Television (modern computer monitor form factor)
1965 - Developed low cost plastic semiconductor packaging (becomes industry standard)

[Motorola 6800 Microprocessor, courtesy Wikipedia]

 1974 - 6800 8-bit Microprocessor developed (for video games, computers, and cars)

[Motorola 6809, Courtesy Wikipedia]

 1978 - 6809 8/16-bit hybrid Microprocessor released (video games, small computers)

[Motorola 68000, courtesy Wikipedia]

1979 - 68K 68000 16/32 bit hybrid Microprocessor released (used in workstations & servers)
1982 - 68K 68008 8/16/32 bit hybrid Microprocessor supporting inexpensive 8 bit support chips
1982 - 68K 68010 16/32 but hybrid Microprocessor supporting Virtual Memory
1984 - 68K 68020 true 32-bit Microprocessor released (for desktop workstations)
1987 - 68K 68030 released, integrating Memory Management unit (lower cost workstations)
1988 - 88K 88000 released, Motorola's first 32-bit RISC architecture announced

[Motorola 88100 Processor, courtesy Wikipedia]

1988 - 88K 88100 released, 32-bit RISC implementation (1-4 socket shared MMU servers)
1989 - 68K 68040 released, integrating Floating Point processor (faster workstations)
1990 - Motorola acquired General Instrument Corporation (proposed digital HDTV)

[Motorola 88110 Processor, courtesy Wikipedia]

1991 - 88K 88110 announced, 2nd generation 32-bit RISC processor (integrated MMU)
1991 - PowerPC architecture released, a partnership between Apple, IBM, and Motorola
1992 - 88K 88110 first & last processors shipped (succeeded by PowerPC)
1992 - PowerPC 601 32-bit IBM CPU, PowerPC core, on Motorola 88110 bus

[Motorola PowerPC 603, courtesy Wikipedia]

1994 - PowerPC 603 32 bit 2nd generation microprocessor released
1994 - PowerPC 604 32 bit 2nd generation microprocessor released

[68060 Microprocessor, courtesy Wikipedia]

1994 - 68K 68060 last 68K compatible processor, instructions optimized in hardware
1994 - 68K ColdFire microprocessor family released, with a simplified 68K core
1995 - 68K DragonBall microprocessor family from Hong Kong, a 68K micro-controller

[Motorola PowerPC 604e, courtesy Wikipedia]

1996 - PowerPC 604e 32 bit 2nd generation microprocessor released
1997 - PowerPC 620 64 bit 2nd generation microprocessor released
1997 - PowerPC 7xx 32 bit 3rd generation microprocessor released
2001 - i.MX microprocessor family released, abandoning 68K core for ARM core

[Freescale Semiconductor logo, courtesy Wikipedia]

2004 - Motorola spins-off Microprocessor division as Freescale Semiconductor
2010 - Kinetis microprocessor family released by Freescale, based upon ARM core
2013 - Kinetis microprocessor developed the worlds smallest processor
2015 - Motorola Semiconductor, which became Freescale, is acquired by Dutch NXP

[NXP Semiconductor logo, courtesy Wikipedia]

Conclusion:
The United States was the originator of massive computer industry change over the decades. Motorola was one of the first major computing vendors. Motorola divested their Semiconductor division to Freescale. Freescale largely dis-invested itself from the award-winning Motorola's 68K architectures in favor of British owned ARM RISC architecture. Now, Freescale is gone.

Hardware: American Sell-Off with IBM and Google

[IBM Logo, courtesy IBM]

Abstract:
As the misguided U.S. economy continues to run up massive debt and continue massive trade deficit, the sell-off of U.S. High Technology assets continues to non-U.S. companies, fat with outsourcing cash. Lenovo, a Chinese company, continues their purchases in the United States of inventors of technologyu.

[Chinese glorifying revolution, courtesy, The Telegraph]

Chinese Lenovo Purchasing U.S. Hard Technology

Chinese global company Lenovo has been purchasing their way into the U.S. market through many technologies essentially invented in the United States. IBM seems to be the most significant seller.

[IBM PC, courtesy Wikipedia]

• 2005-05-01 - PC Division acquired from IBM (PC's and ThinkPad Laptops)
  

  Chinese computer maker Lenovo has completed its $1.75 billion purchase of IBM’s personal computer division, creating the world’s third-largest PC maker, the company said Sunday. The deal — one of the biggest foreign acquisitions ever by a Chinese company

  

  [IBM Thinkpad, courtesy tecqcom]

• 2006-04-10 - Lenovo makes break with the IBM brand (on PC's, not ThinkPad Laptops)
  

  Since Lenovo took over the IBM personal computer business on May 1, 2005, the company's advertising and marketing efforts have excluded IBM almost entirely. The four television spots that Lenovo ran during the Turin Winter Olympics, for example, never mentioned IBM at all. In fact, the only connection to the iconic brand is the IBM logo, which still adorns Lenovo's ThinkPad laptops.

• 2013-01-07 - Lenovo to create ThinkPad-focused business unit to compete at the high end
  

  Lenovo is reorganizing its operations into two business groups... As part of the restructuring, it will create two new divisions, Lenovo Business Group and Think Business Group.The reorganization, which will be completed on April 1 [2013]

  

  [IBM Servers, courtesy Wikipedia]

• 2014-01-23- Lenovo to buy IBM's x86 server business for $2.3bn (PC Servers)
  

  Lenovo and IBM announced on Thursday they have signed a definitive agreement that will see the Chinese hardware giant acquire the IBM's x86 server business for the tidy sum of $2.3bn, with approximately $2bn to be paid in cash and the balance in Lenovo stock.
  Adding to the PC business Lenovo acquired from IBM in 2005, Lenovo will take charge of IBM's System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations.

  

  [Motorola Droid RAZR, courtesy Wikipedia]

• 2014-01-29 - Motorola Cellphone Company acquired from Google (by Lenovo)
  

  Lenovo has signed a deal to buy the loss-making Motorola Mobility smartphone manufacturer for $2.91bn, but a switched-on Google is keeping the patents owned by the firm it gobbled two years ago for $12.5bn.
  "The acquisition of such an iconic brand, innovative product portfolio and incredibly talented global team will immediately make Lenovo a strong global competitor in smartphones," said Lenovo's CEO Yang Yuanqing. "We will immediately have the opportunity to become a strong global player in the fast-growing mobile space."

• 2014-01-29 -  Lenovo splits into 4 groups after buying IBM's server business

  A few days after announcing its plan to buy IBM’s x86 server business, the Chinese company is dividing its operations into four business groups... enterprise products... developing a software ecosystem...PCs and mobile products. The changes go into effect on April 1 [2014]

Clearly, Lenovo has a vision for the U.S. Market and is executing upon it. How unfortunate that American companies such as IBM and Google see little value or possibility in domestic hardware innovation, moving into the future.

[HP Logo, courtesy eWeek]

Impacts in the U.S. Market

There is a great deal of uncertainty felt by partners and customers of IBM through such acquisitions. Previous attempts to leverage the IBM logo to help assure customers was performed, but with the latest purchase - competitors such as HP are seeing the a lot of noise.

• 2014-04-11 - HP: Lenovo's buy of IBM x86 biz is bad, bad, bad...
  

  "Customers and partners are concerned. They are concerned about what the future will be for them – not only in the product but also in support and services," claimed the exec veep and GM of the Enterprise Group.
  HP has an internal migration programme to support customers with IBM servers as they decide to make the switch, he pointed out.
  But providing maintenance support is something that HP and other vendors already offer on third-party kit as standard.

HP was tried to consolidate all of their computing systems under Intel Itanium, before trying to shut them all down. HP also tried to sell off their PC business, but relented, possibly due to customer pressure. How conservative customers who would only buy IBM will respond in the U.S. to their favorite manufacturer leaving the industry may not be a difficult conclusion to reach, especially from companies like HP.

It

Concluding Thoughts:
The massive technology bleed from the United States is partially due to commoditization, but also due to the migration to Cloud and Appliances and value provided by Intel computing vendors becoming less significant with Intel shipping entire motherboards bundling CPU, Floating Point, Memory Management Units, Ethernet, and most recently Video. Cell phones appear to be drastically simplifying, as well. Perhaps there was nothing of value left for Intel or cell phone based manufacturers to do? Can Apple buck the trend?

System Vendor - CISC, RISC, EPIC Update

System Vendor - CISC, RISC, EPIC Update

Abstract:
Since the decline of the Motorola 68000 CISC processor, RISC processors had been on the rise, to eventually be re-challenged by Intel with the release 80386 (and future models) with a Motorola-like flat memory model. UNIX vendors had standardized on the 68000, migrating to the RISC processors, and occasionally moving back to Intel. There has been the prediction of the decline of RISC, the loss of major processor families like ALPHA and MIPS, decline of POWER, rumor of end of EPIC processor family of Itanium by Intel, but some level of diversity surprisingly continues.

[IBM CS-9000 - courtesy Columbia EDU computing history]

IBM Update: Power 7+
In 1982, IBM released a 68000 based workstation, based upon a 32/16bit processor. There was a decision to move to x86 on PC form factor, leveraging an existing relationship between  Intel for the 8088, reducing cost by using an 16/8 bit processor, and gaining ready 8 bit part availability. This started the business PC market. IBM started to design their own RISC chip, called POWER, for their own UNIX workstations. The POWER multichip CPU modules were physically huge and very costly to manufacture - gluing together multiple chips onto a single carrier socket, limiting production quantities.

Apple-IBM-Motorola consortium started manufacturing PowerPC processors, bring POWER RISC architecture onto Apple desktops through simpler manufacturing process, but Apple discontinue it's use, not long after Apple purchased NeXT (this is the point where IBM POWER lost the desktop market.) In January 2008, IBM starting using QuickTransit, to provide x86 Linux software on their proprietary POWER processor, later ending in IBM purchasing Transitive. IBM almost purchased Sun, which would have allowed IBM to acquire SPARC, the industry volume leading commodity [non-multichip module] RISC and Solaris, the industry leading UNIX OS vendor.

[POWER5 Multi-Chip Module]

It was noted in Network Management end of August 2011 that POWER 7+ was late. March 2012, Sony appears to have abandoned IBM POWER - this is when IBM POWER lost the gaming market. April 2012, IBM POWER 7+ was a half-year late. May 2012, IBM POWER 7+ was 7 months late. June 2012 - POWER 7+ is now 8 months late. Multi-chip modules are much simpler to bring to market, over chips designed into a single piece of silicon. For IBM to be so late, something bad must have happened. This does not bode well for AIX users.

HP Update: Itanium
In 2007, HP licensed a Transitive's QuickTransit, to provide Solaris software for HP's Intel based Itanium servers. Transitive made HP a global distributor in 2008, right before IBM bought Transitive, killing HP's path to move SPARC software onto x86 Linux or Itanium HP-UX. Itanium was the first, and possibly last, nearly mainstream Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (or EPIC) CPU architecture.

February 2009, HP describes Project Blackbird - HP acknowledges Solaris leading UNIX in United States, Itanium is on a "death march", HP considers purchasing Sun/Solaris.  December 2009, RedHat kills Linux on Itanium. April 2010, Microsoft kills Windows on Itanium. December 2010, HP-UX was booting under Intel x86 - Project "Redwood" suggested a "last" Itanium chip in 2014, while recommending funding to move HP-UX to Intel x86.. On March 2011, Oracle stops new software development on Itanium. In November 2011, The Register described HP's Project Odyssey - building high-end Intel x86 systems, map Itanium HP-UX features to Intel x86, giving away Itanium/HP-UX software technology to Linux (not available under Itanium), and enhancing Windows with Microsoft. On May 30, 2012, HP revived an old slide dating back to June 25, 2010 from Project Kinetic, where HP-UX and other HP [OpenVMS and NonStop] operating systems will remain under Itanium, but with a twist: socket-level compatibility between Itanium and x86; a new UNIX will run under both Itanium and x86; driving mid-range features into Intel, Linux, and Windows.

The HP-UX, OpenVMS, and NonStop operating systems look dead because of their dependency on the doomed Itanium, whose architecture seems to have a trajectory to be moved to x86 while the OS's will have their features given to other operating systems. The movement to Solaris might be too late, unless HP decides to fix it's technology gap by partnering with an OpenSolaris distribution, like SGI did (see next section.) HP really needs something like Solaris Branded Zones, to encapsulate all 3 OS's.

SGI Update: OpenSolaris???
This is a most unusual update. In 1982, SGI was founded, selling UNIX IRIS Workstations using Mototola 68000 processors. Their OS eventually became AT&T System V - branded as IRIX. In 1986, the MIPS R2000 processor was released and incorporated into SGI workstations. In 1991, SGI went 64 bit with MIPS R4000 processor. SGI abandoned MIPS and moved to Intel Itanium, with their first Itanium workstation in 2001. In 2006, SGI abandoned Itanium for Intel x86, stopped developing IRIX. Rackable purchased SGI in 2009, renaming the entire company back to SGI. One version of the fall of SGI was recorded here.

Why go through all this effort, to remember Super Computer and Graphics Workstation creator SGI? It seems SGI is started to investigate UNIX again. SGI is using Nexenta for their SAN solution. Nexenta is based upon Illumos, formerly based upon OpenSolaris, which is the basis for Oracle's UNIX - Solaris 11. SGI embraces Solaris x86, for a portion of their solution, as HP considered in Project Redwood.

Dell Update: ARM???
The only thing stranger than fiction is reality. Dell would normally never appear in an article like this, but as other vendors are exiting the non-Intel x86 CISC marketplaces, Dell is about the only systems vendor who seems to be expanding out of the Intel x86 CISC market!

[Dell Quad ARM Server per Blade and Chassis]

Now, May 29, 2012 - Dell announces a RISC machine, based upon the ARM processor! Project Copper was bundled under Dell's Enterprise web site tree, which is an indication where they are interested in pushing this new product. Will Dell learn from mistakes by IBM and HP, or corrections by SGI - by bundling a Market Leading UNIX... in the form of an OracleSolaris variant based upon Illumos?

Does an enterprise or manged service grade OS exist for ARM?

In June 2009, a release of OpenSolaris for ARM hit the wild. An example of the OpenSolaris booting on ARM was blogged. October 2009 the web page was created for the release of OpenSolaris for ARM - bringing the leading UNIX to the ARM processor family. Doug Scott mentioned he was reviving a port of OpenSolaris to ARM in October 2011 for ZFS on an ARM based SheevaPlug. In October 2011, ARM announces V8 processor release, migrating ARM from 32bit to 64bit architecture - which is where the OpenSolaris variants have all moved over to. Dell has an excellent opportunity.

Apple Update:Intel and ARM
This is, perhaps, one of the most interesting computer companies in history. Starting with 8 bit 6502 processors, they move to the Motorola 68000 CISC for their high-end publishing workstation, which they called the Macintosh. After kicking out the CEO & founder, Steve Jobs, Jobs started NeXT computer, based on Motorola 68000 processors and a UNIX core.

 

[Apple iPhone 4s based upon ARM processor and MacOSX UNIX derivative iOS]

NeXT migrated their UNIX OS to Intel and went from being a workstation vendor to an OS vendor. Apple desperately needed a modern OS and almost went out of business. Apple purchased NeXT (getting the former CEO Steve Jobs back.) The combined company produced a UNIX based desktop with an OS called MacOS X (Macintosh Operating System 10 - based upon a NeXT Step UNIX OS core) placed on top of a PowerPC chip (designed by Apple, IBM, Motorola consortium - called AIM alliance.) Apple almost merged with Sun several times, collaborating on OpenSTEP (an open-sourced NeXT OS) during various aspects of this history. Soon, Apple created the iMac and the company started to turn around.

[Apple iPad2 based upon ARM processor and MacOSX UNIX derivative iOS]

Most recently, Apple went through another migration - moving MacOS X back to it's NeXT Intel code base. Apple started to regain profitability and then they invested in a new set of consumer products. First, was the iPod, then the iPhone, then the iPad. Many of these new devices were based upon the ARM RISC processor, based upon MacOSX, but it was branded iOS. At this point, Apple exploded, becoming the number client vendor on the market, growing to such an extent that they could buy Intel with the spare cash they had on hand. Apple did the nearly impossible: created a new RISC based UNIX ecosystem based upon nothing.

Oracle/Sun: SPARC & Solaris Update
Early on, SUN built their platforms on Motorola 68000 family, as did most workstation vendors. They experimented with x86 for a short while, discontinued them.Solaris 9 was released on Intel, where Intel based UNIX vendors like NCR started migrating to Solaris from their SVR4 platforms like MP-RAS. Solaris 10 was released only on SPARC, Solaris was open-sourced as OpenSolaris (for both Intel and SPARC), and Solaris 11 was released on Intel and SPARC after Oracle purchased Sun. Interestingly, Solaris was being ported to PowerPC for a short period of time, with designers working on a OpenSTEP interface, during a time when Apple was not doing so well. Various Solaris variants, based upon the OpenSolaris project have hit the marketplace, with more distributions being released regularly.

[SunRay 270 Ultra-Thin Client]

From Sun's early history, Sun had traditionally been a 32 bit UNIX workstation vendor, migrated to a 64 bit UNIX workstations, moved from desktop UNIX workstations to UNIX servers, created the ultra-thin SunRay client to replace UNIX desktop workstations based upon 32 bit MicroSPARC, and surprisingly migrated their SunRay platform from MicroSPARC to ARM. Various releases of OpenSolaris had briefly touched ARM, but Solaris had primarily remained focused on SPARC and Intel with the SunRay's being a firmware based system.

 

[SPARC T5 feature slide, courtesy Oracle on-line presentation] 

As variants of RISC and the one EPIC processor have been found to be losing mind share, there have been two major exceptions: SPARC and ARM. Oracle continues to make thin-clients based upon ARM, with no roadmap. Oracle committed to a 5 year plan on SPARC, which has been executed either on-time or early for multiple processors. The SPARC T4 brought fast single-threaded platform with octal cores in 2011. A few months away, the SPARC T5 processor will bring 16 cores (again) to the SPARC family from Oracle, with features including compression and Oracle number processing in hardware.

Fujitsu: SPARC64 Update
Fujitsu is another interesting company, in this article. They did not organically grow into the UNIX movement from Motorola 68000 processors, like most other industry players - Fujitsu co-developed with Sun into the RISC UNIX market.

[Fujitsu SPARC64 VII, used in both Fujitsu and Sun branded mainframe class systems]

SPARC was developed by Sun Microsystems in 1986. Fujitsu fabricated the SPARC 86900 developed by Sun Microsystems, the first SPARC V7 architecture. SPARC International was founded in 1989, standardizing the 32 bit SPARC V8 multi-vendor architecture, creating the first non-proprietary RISC mainstream platforms. Andrew Heller, head of the RS6000 POWER based UNIX workstation group, left IBM and founded a new company in 1990, HAL Computer Systems, to develop a SPARC processor. In 1991, Fujitsu donated significant funding for a 44% stake, in return to use SPARC chips for their own systems. In 1992, the SPARClite was produced by Fujitsu. In 1993, Fujitsu purchased the rest of HAL, making Fujitsu the sole driver behind SPARC systems. The 64 bit SPARC V9 architecture was published in 1994 and Fujitsu shipped their first system in 1995. Fujitsu actually beat Sun to market with the first 64 bit SPARC processor.

[Fujitsu SPARC64 IX fx 16 core CPU floor plan - heart of fastest super computer cluster in the world in 2011-2012]

While other CPU architectures were proprietary, with various corporations suing one another (i.e. Intel suing AMD) - SPARC brought a level of openness to the industry where vendors could cooperate (and occasionally bailed each other out, spreading the risk, while sharing the rewards from the UNIX market.) During a time when Sun's SPARC development pipeline ran dry, Fujitsu provided SPARC64 CPU's for Sun & Fujitsu high-end platforms. Sun purchased a third-party SPARC development house Afara Websystems, produced the T line of SPARC processors, and jointly sold the SPARC T line with Fujitsu. Solaris is standard on all of these platforms.

[Fujitsu SPARC64 IXfx, 16 core CPU, heart of Fujitsu's PRIMEHPC FX10 - the fastest supercomputer world-wide in 2011-2012]

Fujitsu continues to push ahead with SPARC on their own platforms, holding the fastest computer in the world for over a year. What makes this a special SPARC is that Solaris is not at it's core - rather Linux is. It seems rather amazing that Linux departed from Intel Itanium, in order to become the OS of choice for the fastest computer in the world, on a Fujitsu SPARC platform.

[UNIX - courtesy The Open Group]

In Conclusion
IBM POWER is barely breathing, with their latest road mapped CPU being so late that POWER is almost irrelevant, placing tremendous pressure on AIX. Intel Itanium vendors have been abandoning EPIC family for a half-decade with the final vendor closing it's shop. HP-UX is bound to Intel's EPIC Itanium, which is basically dead, with HP announcing development of an unknown new UNIX OS (hopefully, a Solaris fork based Illumos distribution.) Dell is releasing their first RISC platform, without an enterprise UNIX OS, hopefully they will investigate a Solaris fork Illumos distribution. SGI, who abandoned Intel's EPIC Itanum and their UNIX, is partnering with Solaris fork Illumos based distribution on Intel x86.

Oracle has been executing on SPARC, scoring highest performing industry benchmarks. Fujitsu continues to execute on SPARC, holding highest performing super-computer benchmarks. At this point, there is great opportunity for Solaris forked Illumos distribution - if they can get their act together to support SVR4 industry standards.

The UltraSPARC family of processors could be a bridge for Illumos developers to offer Fujitsu SPARC64 support on the fastest computer in the world. OpenIndiana may be closest to being able to offer such, not to mention get paid for older system support via resellers and new system support from Fujitsu (where Oracle shows little interesting in making Solaris run today.)

ARM offer great opportunities to extend Solaris family of architectures on the server, especially for Dell, who needs an enterprise OS. Of course, HP needs a new enterprise OS under the Intel platform.

If Illumos developers fail to understand how pivotal this point in time could be - this could be the end of an era and they would only have themselves to blame for their short-sightedness in not executing on the OpenSolaris source code tree during a very short time period where they can shine the brightest.