In the same breath as admitting that Lightning, the high-end, super-pipelined Sparc chip that it was developing in conjunction with LSI Logic Corp and Hyundai Electronics, wasn’t going to strike after all, Metaflow Technology Inc also began to talk about a next-generation effort in design that would follow. Code-named Thunder, this latest Sparc effort is again being bankrolled by Hyundai and is being touted by the La Jolla, California-based firm at up to 200 SPECmarks. It’s thought that LSI won’t be the chosen foundry this time around. According to chitchat out at the recent SunWorld Expo in California, initial versions of the 32-bit superscalar part are expected produce 100 SPECmarks, and if everything goes well, it should be closer to the 200 SPECmark range. First silicon is due in early 1993. Its developers are hoping to push performance to over 300 SPECmarks by 1995. The thing is said to handle instructions out of order and speculatively. It is said to fetch four instructions per clock cycle, to execute five per clock cycle and complete seven per clock cycle.
