With the high level of MicroSparc integration (CI No 2,025), Texas Instruments Inc has said that manufacturers need only to add memory, a clock crystal and peripherals. NCR Corp will be supplying a two-chip Sbus input-output subsystem, co-developed with Sun Microsystems Inc, based on its ASIC library that will occupy one of the five Sbus slots supported by Tsunami. The Master I/O, at $120 in 1,000-up quantities, includes an Ethernet controller, 8-bit SCSI core, parallel port and direct memory access controller. The Slave I/O, going for $80 in 1,000-up quantities, includes two serial ports, floppy disk controller and the like. Production quantities will be available in December. Tsunami, compatible with the older Sparc Version 8 Architecture, provides three user-definable Sbus slots. Its floating point unit was developed by Sun and Meiko World Ltd.
