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Sun to open Sparc's doors
News The Sparc chip specifications have been available for years to those who pay a fee to licensing organization Sparc International. However, Sparc hasn't come close to the ubiquity of chip families such as ARM or x86.
[December 7, 2005, 8:30]
Sun to supercharge UltraSparc with Afara acquisition
News Sun designed the original Sparc chips, but the chip's specifications are owned by the Sparc International nonprofit organisation and available for anyone who spends the $90 (£63) licensing fee, Yen said.
[June 26, 2002, 9:43]
Sun and Fujitsu merge Sparc lines
News Fujitsu for years has produced its own Sparc chip family, Sparc64, whose different hardware interface can't fit into Sun's servers without significant engineering work. Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu will merge their Sparc processor-based server...
[June 2, 2004, 8:40]
Sun-Fujitsu effort produces Sparc servers
News The companies struck the partnership in darker days for the Sparc chip family, when Sun was still out of the favour it enjoyed in the dot-com glory days. But Sparc needed a concrete future, and Fujitsu's dual-core, dual-thread Sparc64 VI "Olympus...
[April 17, 2007, 17:53]
Low-spec Niagara on the way
News Sun's forthcoming Niagara chip has eight cores, but the company will sell versions with six or possibly even four, the company's top Sparc server executive said Tuesday. The lower-end versions are chips that have some manufacturing defects but that...
[September 22, 2005, 9:25]
Sun loads 16 cores into 'Rock' chip
News Sun's chip reputation has been tarnished by years of delays and missteps in its Sparc processor business, said Greg Quick, an analyst with the 451 Group, but the company has partially restored it by meeting Niagara schedules.
[December 8, 2006, 15:52]
Sun starts work on Niagara 3
News This new member of the Sparc family will be built using a manufacturing process with 45-nanometre circuitry elements, he said. The company is betting that the approach will help restore its reputation for innovation and its revenue in the server...
[October 19, 2006, 9:50]
Linux back on Sparc
News Sun's Linux-on-Sparc effort provides new rivals to bring Linux to IBM's Power processors and Intel's Itanium, two server-chip lines that compete against Sun's Sparc family. Dave Miller, the lead programmer for Linux on Sun's Sparc processors, wrote...
[February 20, 2006, 14:10]
Sun stakes servers on Rock
News Sun Microsystems plans to release servers based on its future high-end Rock processors by 2008, signalling the company's long-term commitment to the embattled Sparc family. According to benchmarks, Fujitsu is doing a better job engineering Sparc...
[July 20, 2004, 9:15]
Sun to speed up low-end servers
News The company is still working hard to re-establish Sparc as a chip with a strong future, but Sun also added its "Galaxy" line of x86 servers into the product line. Sun was afraid the Niagara systems would cut into sales of the more conventional...
[September 13, 2006, 8:30]
Sun releases plans to build on Rock
News Sparc processors, Niagara and Rock, that use a more advanced manufacturing process. Sun's current Sparc chips are built with a Texas Instruments manufacturing process with 90nm circuitry elements. Sun is also working on a partnership called APL...
[April 18, 2006, 9:25]
Sun breathes new life into Sparc efforts
News But the business unit couldn't sell much outside the company when Sparc chip performance began lagging behind competitors' products, Yen said. But in 2004, shortly after Schwartz was promoted to chief operating officer, he merged the Sparc chip...
[March 28, 2007, 9:43]
Sun steps up efforts on open-source chip
News It is our goal of eventually open-sourcing these Sparc processor designs," said David Yen, head of Sun's newly re-created microelectronics group, speaking of Niagara 2 and the Neptune networking chip derived from it.
[May 15, 2007, 16:59]
Sun refreshes server lines
News Sparc-Sun jail. The UltraSparc T1 can run 32 threads total, and the T2 can run 64, said Fadi Azhari, director of marketing for Sun's Sparc server group. Sun recently laid off 200 employees from its Sparc server group, about 7 percent of the total...
[April 12, 2006, 10:20]
Sun's high hopes for Niagara
News When was the last time a Sparc box had price-performance leadership in the Web tier? Sun's Sparc processor family, hobbled by delays and lacklustre performance, has been losing share to x86 chips such as Intel's Xeon and to IBM's Power family.
[October 27, 2005, 17:00]
Sparc goes open source
News Sparc server group, is expected to discuss the move at the Multi-Core Sparc family, which has lost market share in recent years to IBM's This approach is designed to let the T2000 and forthcoming T1000 servers run many jobs in parallel with good...
[March 21, 2006, 8:25]
Sun and Fujitsu nurture closer alliance
News Both companies are members of the independent Sparc International group that determines common elements of Sparc chips, and both have extensive future chip plans. Joint development of the Sparc processor alone could save (Sun) $200m (£118m...
[October 24, 2003, 12:45]
Start-up boosts Sun's open source plans
News Sun's Solaris version of Unix is chiefly used on Sparc processors, and the server maker is encouraging efforts by Linux programmers to support the UltraSparc T1. To infuse new energy into the Sparc processor realm, Sun released hardware designs for...
[September 12, 2006, 8:45]
Sun releases Sparc specs in Linux love bid
News The publicly available Sparc technology is significant, said IDC analyst Jean Bozman. The specifications are expected to be useful to Sun as well as outsiders because they're intended to stabilize the heretofore changing interface that operation...
[February 15, 2006, 8:00]
Sun doubles server speeds
News And although Sun cancelled its UltraSparc V, it continues to develop new Sparc models code-named Niagara and Rock while relying on a partnership with Fujitsu for other high-end Sparc models. Sun Microsystems will detail its high-end UltraSparc IV...
[October 5, 2004, 15:15]
