CPU Shack - 200MHz UltraSparc

The Game Is Changed; 200 MHz UltraSPARC

December 1995 John J. McLaughlin, Editor/Publisher flash@flashback.com
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http://www.sun.com/stb

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (November 7, 1995) -- Increasing benchmarked and
real-world performance, SPARC Technology Business, a division of
Sun Microsystems, Inc., announced today sampling of its new
200-MHz, 64-bit UltraSPARC-I microprocessor. The 200 MHz
UltraSPARC microprocessor will sample by year end. It delivers the
industry's first on-chip broadcast-quality MPEG-2 decode, 1.6
GByte/s bandwidth -- the industry's highest, and an estimated 322
SPECint92 and 462 SPECfp92 (2 MByte cache). New performance
numbers for the 182 MHz, 167 MHz and 143 MHz UltraSPARC
microprocessors were also released at an estimated 294/421,
269/386 and 230/331 SPECint92/SPECfp92 respectively (2 MByte
cache).

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UltraSPARC-I features the New-Media VIS Instruction Set and is the world's
first general purpose microprocessor to deliver on-chip support for MPEG-2 d
ecode. The VIS Instruction Set enables UltraSPARC-I to perform at the
industry's highest levels. The 200 MHz UltraSPARC-I delivers up to 2
GOps/sec (giga-operations/second) .

"The table stakes have changed. Manufactured benchmark results are no longer
good enough. Today's ante must include three things -- balanced compute
performance for general purpose processor demands, high data bandwidth for
networked applications and New-Media processing for the visualization
demands on the net," stated Chet Silvestri, president of SPARC Technology
Business. "UltraSPARC is currently in the game with four players today --
UltraSPARC 143, 167, 182 and 200 MHz."

Real-World Benchmarks Say It All

At this year's Microprocessor Forum, SPARC Technology Business introduced
the VIS Kids, New-Media experts and power users of the VIS Instruction Set.
VIS Kid Matthew Donham of Picker International benchmarked UltraSPARC at
two-times the real-world performance of the industry's highest performance
processor. Adobe's Jon Ferraiolo demonstrated a three- to four-times
Photoshop performance advantage on the UltraSPARC reference platform. H&P
Eurosoft demonstrated the industry's fastest on-chip MPEG-2 decode. Sun
Microsystems Computer Corporation's Ihtisham Kabir detailed an up to 40X
performance improvement in graphics, networking and compute applications
with the VIS Instruction Set.

About UltraSPARC

The 5.2 million transistor UltraSPARC-I is the first generation of the
UltraSPARC microprocessor family. It features integrated New-Media support
for desktop videoconferencing, real-time MPEG-2 decode, video effects and
texture-mapped triangle rendering. Its highly scalar and
high-data-throughput design enables UltraSPARC-I (200 MHz) to move data at a
peak rate of 1.6 GBytes/second and, while employing the New-Media Visual
Instruction Set (VIS), it can operate at a rate of 2 GOPs (200 MHz).
UltraSPARC-I is manufactured by Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) at its advanced
CMOS fabrication facility in Dallas, Texas using TI's advanced EPIC3, 0.5
micron CMOS process.

Availability

Samples of the 200 MHz UltraSPARC-I will be available in the fourth quarter
of 1995. Production availability is expected in the first quarter of 1996.

SPARC Technology Business, a division of Sun Microsystems, Inc., was formed
in April 1993 to develop, design and distribute SPARC technologies and
products worldwide. The division's portfolio includes microprocessors,
chipsets, modules, boards, technology licenses, silicon and systems packages
and consulting services. Currently, the division has more than 500 employees
working in product development, engineering, marketing and worldwide sales
and support. Complete information on SPARC Technology Business is available
via the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com/stb Information on the SPARC
architecture, including a complete list of its supporters is available at
http://www.sparc.com.