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From: chuck@amdahl.amdahl.com (Charles Simmons)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Information Request: Sun's SPARC Chip
Message-ID: <18203@amdahl.amdahl.com>
Date: Fri, 13-Nov-87 03:06:01 EST
Article-I.D.: amdahl.18203
Posted: Fri Nov 13 03:06:01 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Nov-87 06:45:15 EST
References: <6310001@hpcupt1.HP.COM> <2411@im4u.UUCP>
Reply-To: chuck@amdahl.amdahl.com (Charles Simmons)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 19
Summary: SPARC Rumors

In article <2411@im4u.UUCP> rajiv@im4u.UUCP (Rajiv N. Patel) writes:
>I have heard a rumor that SPARC architecture has some essential
>features found in the CRISP architecture developed at BELL Labs.
>
>Any comments or similar rumors known to others. I too am really
>curious to know about SPARC. Any articles, brochures etc.
>
>Rajiv

I've heard a rumor that the SPARC chip is implemented with rougly
12,000 gates.  This seems pretty small, and definitely small enough
to attract the attention of AT&T and Xerox.  With such a small number
of gates, the SPARC chip should be implementable in ECL or GaAs, neh?
Hasn't Sun farmed out production of the SPARC chip to some chip maker
who will be building an ECL version of the chip?  Isn't the chip maker
claiming they will get something like 20 or 40 VAX MIPS out of the chip?
Wouldn't that excite AT&T and Xerox?

-- Cs