HaL Computer Systems Ltd finally unveiled its enternally-awaited 64-bit Sparc at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. The V9 Sparc architecture part comes as a seven-chip module with a processor, four 64Kb caches, memory management unit and clock chip on a 2.4 by 1.75 board. Fabricated using parent Fujitsu Ltd’s 3.3V, 0.4 micron CMOS process, the Sparc 64 has reached second silicon. With 22m transistors it is being tagged at 256 SPECint92 and 330 SPECfp92 at 154MHz. All memory, including cache, has built-in error correction and detection. There were no further details, and no samples will be going outside the company. The part will feature in HaL systems, due to be announced soon, and will be used in other Fujitsu group products, including ICL Plc boxes (CI No 2,369), though they will have to be pretty hot boxes to begin recovering the three- or four-year development funds HaL has spent.
