FBSD on SunBlade 1500 Silver

[Christian Baer]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2007 06:13:09 -0800 Royce Williams wrote:

>>  IIRC FreeBSD does not support UltraSPARC III processor yet.
>
> How much overlap is there between potential UltraSPARC III support and
> the ongoing work on UltraSPARC-T1 support?

Practically none. The T1 ist a completely different typ of CPU, designed
mainly as a server processor that runs many tasks at the same time. That
is the reason why the T1 is a multi-core by design.

The Sun4u was designed mainly as a workstation processor. Although the T1
probably wouldn't look all that bad in a workstation when compared to a
4u, don't forget how old the 4u is. Workstations usually have few tasks
running at the same time and need these to run fast. The T1's design makes
each core relatively slow but all cores put together make it quite
powerful.

Put into some sort of analogy:
Think of the T1 as many (cargo) train engines put together to pull one
train. If you have more engines, you can pull more cargo. But you won't
get the train to go any faster. A T1 is a MAC, not a Ferrari. :-) The 4u
was the Ferrari of its time.

Regards
Chris