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Than 650 European Universities and Research Institutions Invited to
Develop Innovative Processor Designs Based on Sun Microsystems's
OpenSPARC Technology
Sun Microsystems,
Inc. and Europractice today announced a three-year
collaboration to promote OpenSPARC CMT (Chip Multithreading)
technology -- one of the only open sourced multi-core, multithreaded
processor architectures--as a reference design among 650 universities
and research institutions across 38 countries in the European region.
Europractice is a European Union-backed non-profit microelectronics design stimulation
project managed by the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
The agreement is
designed to cultivate Europe's future engineering talent, encourage
innovative processor designs and spur development in the
high-technology industry across the region. The combination of
Europractice's leading-edge infrastructure for electronic design
tools and implementation flows, and Sun's industry standard-based
multi-core processor architecture will provide researchers,
professors and students with an end-to-end solution to help create
next-generation multithreaded microprocessors.
"Sun's
open source strategy and easily accessible processor IP design is a
key reason for entering into this relationship," said Dr John
McLean, Head of Europractice Software Service. "We are excited
about the potential for future engineering innovations and
educational advances on Sun's OpenSPARC technologies and believe
access to this technology will help boost Europe's capabilities in
teaching and research in the microprocessor field."
Europractice selected Sun's OpenSPARC technology based on
its advanced architecture and freely available commercial-caliber
designs. Intended to strengthen the open source community and further
next-generation multi-core, multithreading development, both the
OpenSPARC T1 and OpenSPARC T2 processor register transfer
level (RTL) files can be downloaded at www.opensparc.net
"Access to open
technologies creates opportunity for talented individuals and spurs
communities of innovation. Our collaboration with Europractice will
open doors for tens of thousands of advanced engineering students and
next-generation technology leaders across Europe," said Lin Lee,
Vice President of Global Communities, Sun Microsystems.
"Sun knows that
open technologies open doors for talented individuals. Our
collaboration with Europractice will create untold opportunities for
tens of thousands of advanced engineering students and
next-generation technology leaders across Europe," said Lin Lee,
Vice President of Global Communities, Sun Microsystems. "This is
also an important extension of the innovative OpenSPARC ecosystem
that is growing rapidly worldwide - from the U.S. and Asia, and now
to Europe."
Partners to
Promote Academic Excellence
As part of the
agreement, Sun and Europractice will jointly foster best practices
throughout European education institutions and promote curriculum
adoption.
Sun and Europractice
will hold the first in a series of OpenSPARC technology workshops
this autumn. Professors from participating universities will join
Sun experts to learn first-hand about the latest processor
innovations, including chip multithreading (CMT) and software
programming that maximizes the advantages of multithreading. These
professors will then incorporate OpenSPARC in their curriculum,
research and lab work.
Students with access
to the OpenSPARC technology will be empowered to create innovative
and advanced solutions more quickly and easily due to Sun's open
processor architecture.
As a global
initiative, today's announcement builds on similar efforts by Sun
and universities in China, Taiwan, New Zealand and the United States.
"As one of
Europe's leading universities in the microelectronic design space,
we view this development as important to our drive to integrate
leading technology to create next- generation hardware solutions for
the business environment," said Professor Per Stenstrom,
Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. "Sun's
UltraSPARC T2 processor is one of the most advanced, multi-core,
multithreaded and open sourced platforms in the industry."
CMT Pioneer Spurs
New Opportunities in Chip and Systems Design
Sun launched the
multi-core, CMT revolution in 2005 with the introduction of the
UltraSPARC(R) T1 processor, one of the industry's first eight-core,
32-thread, general purpose processor. In 2007, Sun introduced the
second generation of CMT processors, the UltraSPARC T2, which doubled
the thread count of the UltraSPARC T1, to 64. The UltraSPARC T2 is
also the only true "system on a chip" in its class,
combining high compute performance with integrated 10 Gb Ethernet,
cryptographic acceleration, floating point units, and PCI-E
controllers. Combined with the power of the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating
System (OS) and Sun(TM) Logical Domains (LDoms) virtualization
technology, the UltraSPARC T2 makes it possible to host up to 64
logical domains on a single chip.
OpenSPARC.net is the
genesis of a vision by engineers, technologists, evangelists and
executives at Sun Microsystems, Inc. to create a larger community
where open conversations and collaborative development projects spawn
dramatic innovations around chip design. Individual programmers as
well as representatives from universities, industry associations,
supporting software companies, foundries, entrepreneurs, large
corporations and visionaries have already begun to participate in
this expanded community.
Since the launch of the OpenSPARC T1
processor in March 2006, over 9,000 OpenSPARC T1 and OpenSPARC T2
processor RTL files have been downloaded.
Also today Sun
announced the launch of the OpenSPARC Internals book, a resource
dedicated entirely to supporting the broad community of students,
developers and programmers using CMT technology across the globe. The
guide, designed to simplify a variety of complex OpenSPARC
programming tasks is available for download at
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