SuperSPARC

SuperSPARC
The SuperSPARC microprocessor
General information
Launched1992
Discontinued1995
Designed bySun Microsystems
Common manufacturer
Performance
Max. CPU clock rate33 MHz to 90 MHz
Cache
L2 cachenone, 1 MB, 2 MB
Architecture and classification
Instruction setSPARC V8
Physical specifications
Transistors
  • 3.1 million
Cores
  • 1

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[1] BiCMOS process.[2]

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.

  1. ^ "SuperSPARC Microprocessor Fact Sheet". Archived from the original on 2015-02-22.
  2. ^ "Testability features of the SuperSPARC microprocessor". Proceedings of IEEE International Test Conference - (ITC). 1993. doi:10.1109/TEST.1993.470625.