If you have been following OpenSPARC release train, you probably noticed that Sun just open-sourced one of the critical blocks of the OpenSPARC T2 (aka Niagara2) processor - Network Interface Unit (NIU). Details of this release are here - OpenSPARC T2 Version 1.1.

Great to see the respected magazine "The Economist" running an article on open-source hardware in its quarterly technology report - Open Sesame.

This is a clear indication that open-source hardware is still in its infancy and many opportunities exist at all levels of the pyramid to benefit from this paradigm. Students can learn from the commercial class designs, developers and customers benefit from open system architectures, interfaces and specifications, and corporations can get a better and faster pulse of the market trends.

Here comes one more exciting announcement from the OpenSPARC team. We just released version 1.6 of OpenSPARC T1. You can read up the details and download the design from OpenSPARC T1 download page but here are some salient features of this release:

For those who don’t know, Sun’s new T2+ machines extend the T2’s CMT capabilities across multiple units to produce 16 and 32 core SMP machines capable of handling 128 and 256 concurrent threads respectively.

Sun blogger Denis Sheahan provides a good overview of the current dual socket releases here

By itself the T2 continues to set new performance records - Sun’s bmseer usually has the latest; most recently a pair of new SPECint_rate2006 and SPECfp_rate2006 records.

FOSE means:
“Free/Open Source Expo” - This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , Chairman of Sun Microsystems
“Federal Open Source Expo” - This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , Principal of OpenSource Connections

When the chairman of a company that spends $2 Billion dollars yearly on R&D makes more or less the same joke that you do, it makes you see the kernal of truth in that statement.

This is my first entry, and what better way to start, than with a great event. Last week here at Sao Paulo occurred a tree day workshop that had as subject openSPARC specification and FPGA implementation. The workshop happened from 24 through 26 March and was hosted by the Grupo de Sistemas Pervasivos e de Alto Desempenho (Pervasive systems and high performance group - PAD) of the Laboratory of Integrated Systems (LSI) of the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (EPUSP). This was the first of many events related to the openSPARC center of excellence program at USP.

The compiler flag -fast gets an unfair rap. Even the compiler reports:

cc: Warning: -xarch=native has been explicitly specified, or 



implicitly specified by a macro option, -xarch=native on this 



architecture implies -xarch=sparcvis2 which generates code that 



does not run on pre UltraSPARC III processors

which is hardly fair given the the UltraSPARC III line came out about 8 years ago! So I want to quickly discuss what's good about the option, and what reasons there are to be cautious.

Dan Berger posted a comment about the compiler flags we'd used for Ruby. Basically, we've not done compiler flag tuning yet, so I'll write a quick outline of the first steps in tuning an application.

Ubuntu is on the upswing. The signs are everywhere (including here with its tie-up with IBM). Canonical, which developed this version of Linux, has been very busy talking with the major server and desktop vendors and is making inroads with both.

I've been invited to appear in Sun's "Meet the authors" programme in Second Life. I'll be talking about my book on 24th April, 9am PST. Hopefully there will be copies of my free book available to some fortunate attendants.