Comment by nickpsecurity

10 years ago

" You know that the VHDL code for UltraSPARC T1 and T2 has been open sourced?"

That was exciting. It could do well even on a 200MHz FPGA given threading performance. Then, use eASIC's Nextreme's to convert it to structured ASIC for better speed, power-usage, and security from dynamic attacks on FPGA. That it's Oracle and they're sue-happy concerns me. I'd read that "GPL" license very carefully just in case they tweaked it. If it's safe, then drop one of those badboys (yes, the T2) on the best node we can afford with key I/O. Can use microcontrollers on the board for the rest as they're dirt cheap. Same model as Raptor's as I explained in another comment.

Alternatively, use Gaisler as Leon3 is GPL and designed for customization. Simple, too. Leon4 is probably inexpensive compared to ARM, etc.

"SPARC ISA compliant processor only costs $50, the SPARC will never really, truly be gone, especially not for those people capable of synthesizing their own FPGA's,"

Yep.

"Too bad they didn't turn their designs into ready-to-buy servers."

Not quite a server but available and illustrates your point:

http://www.gaisler.com/index.php/products/systems/gr-rasta?t...

Btw, I found this accidentally while looking for a production version of OpenSPARC: