Sun4d is a

computer architecture In computer engineering, computer architecture is a description of the structure of a computer system made from component parts. It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation. At a more detailed level, t ...

introduced by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

in 1992. It is a development of the earlier

Sun-4 Sun-4 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RIS ...

architecture, using the XDBus system bus,

SuperSPARC 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 fabricat ...

processors, and

SBus SBus is a computer bus system that was used in most SPARC-based computers (including all SPARCstations) from Sun Microsystems and others during the 1990s. It was introduced by Sun in 1989 to be a high-speed bus counterpart to their high-speed S ...

I/O cards. The XDBus was the result of a collaboration between Sun and

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

; its name comes from an earlier Xerox project, the Xerox Dragon. These were Sun's largest machines to date, and their first attempt at making a

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

-class server.

Architecture

Sun4d computers are true SMP systems; although memory and CPUs are installed per system board, the memory on a given board is not in any way " closer" to the CPUs on that same board. All memory and I/O devices are equally connected to all CPUs. All of these computers use a passive backplane into which system boards are plugged. Each system board provides CPUs, memory, and an I/O bus. As system boards are added, these components are added to the whole in a completely seamless fashion. It is not a cluster, but works as a single large machine.

Machines

Sun4d computers include the

SPARCcenter The SPARCstation, SPARCserver and SPARCcenter product lines are a series of SPARC-based computer workstations and servers in desktop, desk side (pedestal) and rack-based form factor configurations, that were developed and sold by Sun Microsystems ...

2000 (1992) and SPARCserver 1000 (1993) from Sun Microsystems, and the

Cray CS6400 The Cray Superserver 6400, or CS6400, is a discontinued multiprocessor server computer system produced by Cray Research Superservers, Inc., a subsidiary of Cray Research, and launched in 1993. The CS6400 was also sold as the Amdahl SPARCsummit 6400 ...

(1993) from

Cray Research Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed i ...

. The system boards in these three machines are all slightly different, physically and electronically, and are not interchangeable. All Sun4d machines provide

JTAG JTAG (named after the Joint Test Action Group which codified it) is an Technical standard, industry standard for verifying designs and testing printed circuit boards after manufacture. JTAG implements standards for on-chip instrumentation in ele ...

ports, although unlike later systems the SPARCcenter and SPARCserver only use it for maintenance purposes.

SPARCserver 1000

The SPARCserver 1000 is a 5U rackmountable chassis with four 40 MHz XDBus slots, and space for four half-height 3.5"

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

drives plus two half-height front-accessible 5.25" SCSI drives (typically used for

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

and DAT). Each system board connects to one XDBus and provides two MBus slots for CPUs, three SBus slots for I/O boards, four banks of memory (four SIMMs apiece), and builtin SCSI-2, 10baseT

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

, and two

serial ports In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. T ...

. Maximum configuration: eight CPUs and 2 GB RAM. The SPARCserver 1000E has a slightly faster XDBus (50 MHz). The system boards are not backwards compatible. The SPARCserver 1000, like earlier

/xxx servers, has a set of LEDs on each system board that display diagnostics on

POST Post or POST commonly refers to: *Mail, the postal system, especially in Commonwealth of Nations countries **An Post, the Irish national postal service **Canada Post, Canadian postal service **Deutsche Post, German postal service **Iraqi Post, Ira ...

, and CPU load while running. These allow the user to see at a glance how busy each processor on the system is. They are informally referred to as " Cylon" displays, because of the way each displays a single light bouncing back and forth resembles the scanner of the

robots "\n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...

in the original ''

Battlestar Galactica ''Battlestar Galactica'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Glen A. Larson. The franchise began with the Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series), original television series in 1978, and was followed by a short-run sequel se ...

'' television series. The SPARCserver 1000 will run a slightly-patched

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

2.4 kernel in SMP mode. A single octo-processor SPARCserver 1000 helped 117

SPARCstation 20 The SPARCstation 20 or SS20 (code-named ''Kodiak'') is a discontinued Sun Microsystems workstation introduced in March 1994 based on the SuperSPARC or hyperSPARC CPU. It is one of the last models in the SPARCstation family of Sun "pizza box form ...

Model HS11 units, 87 with two 100 MHz hyperSPARC processors and 30 with four 100 MHz hyperSPARC processors, to render ''

Toy Story ''Toy Story'' is a 1995 American computer-animated comedy film directed by John Lasseter (in his feature directorial debut), produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the '' Toy Story ...

''.

SPARCcenter 2000

The SPARCcenter 2000 is a full rack system that includes a main chassis with ten 40MHz dual-XDBus slots and several disk arrays. The system boards connect to two XDBuses for extra bandwidth, and provide two MBus slots, four SBus slots, four banks of memory (four

SIMM A SIMM (single in-line memory module) is a type of memory module containing random-access memory used in computers from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. It differs from a dual in-line memory module (DIMM), the most predominant form of memory ...

s apiece), and two serial ports apiece. Unlike the SPARCserver 1000 boards, they do not have a builtin SCSI and Ethernet port per system board. Maximum configuration: twenty CPUs and 5 GB RAM. The SPARCcenter 2000E has a slightly faster XDBus (50 MHz). The system boards are not backwards compatible.

Cray Superserver 6400

The

is a 16-slot, 55 MHz quad-XDBus system. Each system board provides four MBus slots, four SBus slots, four banks of memory, and no builtin I/O ports. Maximum configuration: sixty-four CPUs and 16 GB RAM. When

SGI SGI may refer to: Companies *Saskatchewan Government Insurance *Scientific Games International, a gambling company *Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products *Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...

purchased

in 1996, they sold the division responsible for the CS6400 to Sun, where it was developed into the extremely successful

Sun Enterprise 10000 Sun Enterprise is a range of UNIX server computers produced by Sun Microsystems from 1996 to 2001. The line was launched as the Sun Ultra Enterprise series; the ''Ultra'' prefix was dropped around 1998. These systems are based on the 64-bit Ultr ...

Performance

Relative performance of Sun-4d machines, based on

SPEC Spec may refer to: *Specification (technical standard), an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product, or service **datasheet, or "spec sheet" People * Spec Harkness (1887-1952), American professional baseball pitcher ...

CINT92 Rate benchmarks:

References

External links

Xerox PARC CSL-93-17 "Papers from the SunDragon Project"

Sun-4D Architecture
June, 1992