With spring now upon us, the outlook for Sun Microsystems’ Scalable Processor Architecture – Sparc – are positively blooming. Firstly, Opus Systems, Cupertino, California, and LSI Logic Corp, Milpitas, California, are working on a commercial design method for building Sparc-based workstations running SunOS. The design is based around LSI’s recently announced SparcKit building block chip set for developing systems compatible with Sun Microsystems’ SparcStation 1. Opus will design a workstation and do the SunOS implementation for the design, and LSI will license the design and software to manufacturers, which will eliminate the need for company-specific design strategies and should reduce significantly the time required to bring compatibles to market. The idea is to create a Sparc-based workstation-compatible market similar to the personal computer market – or – one-stop shopping for processors, peripheral chips and operating systems according to LSI’s Gene Hill. Separately, Cypress Semiconductor says that it is now set to begin sample deliveries of the first Sparc chip specifically designed for embedded systems; it has a 25MHz clock (CI No 1,411).
