SuperSPARC

SuperSPARC

The SuperSPARC microprocessor
General information
Launched	1992
Discontinued	1995
Designed by	Sun Microsystems
Performance
Max. CPU clock rate	33 MHz to 90 MHz
Architecture and classification
Instruction set	SPARC V8
Physical specifications
Cores	1

The SuperSPARC is a microprocessor that implements the SPARC V8 instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Sun Microsystems. 33 and 40 MHz versions were introduced in 1992. The SuperSPARC contained 3.1 million transistors. It was fabricated by Texas Instruments (TI) at Miho, Japan in a 0.8 micrometre triple-metal BiCMOS process.

There were two derivatives of the SuperSPARC: the SuperSPARC+ and SuperSPARC-II. The SuperSPARC+ was developed to remedy some of the design flaws that limited the SuperSPARC's clock frequency and thus performance. The SuperSPARC-II, introduced in 1994, was a major revision with improvements that enabled the microprocessor to reach 85 MHz in desktop systems and 90 MHz in the more heavily cooled SPARCserver-1000E.

The SuperSPARC-II was replaced in 1995 by the 64-bit UltraSPARC, an implementation of the 64-bit SPARC V9 ISA.

Models

SuperSPARC (Viking)

• • SM20: 1 CPU, no L2-Cache, 33 MHz, Bus: 33 MHz
  • SM21: 1 CPU, 1 MB L2-Cache, 33 MHz, Bus: 33 MHz (only works in early SPARCserver-2000 systems)
  • SM30: 1 CPU, no L2-Cache, 36 MHz, Bus: 36 MHz
  • SM40: 1 CPU, no L2-Cache, 40 MHz, Bus: 40 MHz
  • SM41: 1 CPU, 1 MB L2-Cache, 40.3 MHz, Bus: 40 MHz
  • SM50: 1 CPU, no L2-Cache, 50 MHz, Bus: 50 MHz
  • SM51: 1 CPU, 1 MB L2-Cache, 50 MHz, Bus: 40 MHz
  • SM51-2: 1 CPU, 2 MB L2-Cache, 50 MHz, Bus: 40 MHz
  • SM52: 2 CPU, 1 MB L2-Cache, 45 MHz, Bus: 40 MHz
  • SM52X: 2 CPU, 1 MB L2-Cache, 50 MHz, Bus: 40 MHz
  • SM61: 1 CPU, 1 MB L2-Cache, 60 MHz, Bus: 50/55 MHz
  • SM61-2: 1 CPU, 2 MB L2-Cache, 60 MHz, Bus: 50/55 MHz

SuperSPARC II (Voyager)

• • SM71: 1 CPU, 1 MB L2-Cache, 75 MHz, Bus: 50 MHz
  • SM81: 1 CPU, 1 MB L2-Cache, 85 MHz, Bus: 50 MHz
  • SM81-2: 1 CPU, 2 MB L2-Cache, 85 MHz, Bus: 50/55 MHz
  • SM91-2: 1 CPU, 2 MB L2-Cache, 90 MHz, Bus: 50 MHz

• Die photos
• 
  TI SuperSPARC I
• 
  Sun SuperSPARC II

References

• "TI SuperSPARC for Sun Station 3 in production". (11 May 1992). Electronic News.
• DeTar, Jim (10 October 1994). "Sun sets SuperSPARC-II as UltraSPARC V9 bridge". Electronic News.