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 contains 3.1 million transistors. It was fabricated by Texas Instruments (TI) at Miho, Japan in a 0.8 micrometre triple-metal BiCMOS process.
There are 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.
SuperSPARC CPU modules are used in both the SPARCstation 10 and SPARCstation 20.
The SuperSPARC-II was replaced in 1995 by the 64-bit UltraSPARC, an implementation of the 64-bit SPARC V9 ISA.
Models
SuperSPARC (Viking) Model CPU L2 Cache Clock Speed Bus Speed Notes SM20 1 CPU none 33 MHz 33 MHz SM21 1 CPU 1 MB 33 MHz 33 MHz only works in early SPARCserver-2000 systems SM30 1 CPU none 36 MHz 36 MHz SM40 1 CPU none 40 MHz 40 MHz SM41 1 CPU1 MB 40.3 MHz 40 MHz SM50 1 CPU none 50 MHz 50 MHz SM51 1 CPU 1 MB 50 MHz 40 MHz SM51-2 1 CPU 2 MB 50 MHz 40 MHz SM52 2 CPU 1 MB 45 MHz 40 MHz SM52X 2 CPU 1 MB 50 MHz 40 MHz SM61 1 CPU 1 MB 60 MHz 50/55 MHz SM61-2 1 CPU 2 MB 60 MHz 50/55 MHz
SuperSPARC II (Voyager) Model CPU L2 Cache Clock Speed Bus Speed Notes SM71 1 CPU 1 MB 75 MHz 50 MHz SM81 1 CPU 1 MB 85 MHz 50 MHz SM81-2 1 CPU 2 MB 85 MHz 50/55 MHz SM91-2 1 CPU 2 MB 90 MHz 50 MHz
See also SPARCstation 10 SPARCstation 20
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.