glass@portia.stanford.edu (Brett Glass) (01/06/91)
I'm working on a detailed article about the SPARC architecture for BYTE Magazine I've contacted Sun and SPARC International and gotten the "party line;" I'd now like to get comments -- positive and negative -- from SPARC users and from proponents and users of competitive architectures. What do you think of SPARC as an architecture? Do you think it's well thought-out? Did the designers provide well for the needs of a UNIX-based workstation? For embedded applications? Did they leave sufficient room for future enhancements? What are chip makers doing now to hot-rod the architecture? What do you think of SPARC as a strategy? Will the many SPARC "clone" vendors be able to compete with Sun? If so, how? What do you think of the SPARC-based machines you've seen? Are they good performers? How do you think their price/performance compares to that of competitive RISC workstations? CISC workstations? PCs? I would also like the article to include some short, illustrative programs in SPARC assembly language in the article. Unfortunately, none of the documentation I've found so far has included a complete programs and makefile that would allow me to assemble, link and run a program on a SPARC workstation. (I've tried passing the assembly-language output of a C compiler through the assembler without success. If you have a "Hello, world!" in assembler for the SPARC, a copy would be a tremendous help. This is a big topic, and I want to make sure I cover it as well as possible. Any and all input would be much appreciated. Sincerely, Brett Glass (rogue@well.sf.ca.us) [[Ed's Note: Please direct all followups directly to the author. -bdg]]