Sun4d is a computer architecture introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992. It is a development of the earlier Sun-4 architecture, using the XDBus system bus, SuperSPARC processors, and SBus I/O cards. The XDBus was the result of a collaboration between Sun and Xerox; 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 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 ...

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

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, 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. ...

. 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 Sun-4/xxx servers, has a set of LEDs on each system board that display diagnostics on

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, 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 ''

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

Model HS11 units, 87 with two 100 MHz

hyperSPARC The hyperSPARC, code-named "Pinnacle", is a microprocessor that implements the SPARC Version 8 instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Ross Technology for Cypress Semiconductor. The hyperSPARC was introduced in 1993, and competed with ...

processors and 30 with four 100 MHz hyperSPARC processors, to render '' 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 memo ...

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 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 CINT92 Rate benchmarks:

References

External links

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

Sun-4D Architecture
June, 1992