SuperSPARC

SuperSPARC

Company type	Microprocessor
Industry	Semiconductor
Founded	1992
Founder	Sun Microsystems
Headquarters	United States
Products	Microprocessors implementing SPARC V8 ISA

The SuperSPARC is a microprocessor that implements the SPARC V8 instruction set architecture (ISA), created by Sun Microsystems. The first models, operating at 33 and 40 MHz and released in 1992, incorporated 3.1 million transistors. Manufactured by Texas Instruments (TI) at their Miho, Japan facility, it utilized a 0.8 micrometer triple-metal BiCMOS fabrication process.

Following the initial release, two variants were developed: the SuperSPARC+ overcame design constraints that limited clock frequency, while the SuperSPARC-II, launched in 1994, delivered substantial performance enhancements, running at speeds up to 85 MHz for desktop machines and reaching 90 MHz in cooled SPARCserver-1000E configurations.

The SuperSPARC processors served as the core CPUs for both the SPARCstation 10 and SPARCstation 20. In 1995, the SuperSPARC-II was succeeded by the 64-bit UltraSPARC, which adopted the 64-bit SPARC V9 ISA.

SuperSPARC (Viking)

Model	CPU	L2 Cache	Clock Speed	Bus Speed	Notes
SM20	single CPU	none	33 MHz	33 MHz
SM21	single CPU	1 MB	33 MHz	33 MHz	Exclusively used in early SPARCserver-2000 models
SM30	single CPU	none	36 MHz	36 MHz
SM40	single CPU	none	40 MHz	40 MHz
SM41	single CPU	1 MB	40.3 MHz	40 MHz
SM50	single CPU	none	50 MHz	50 MHz
SM51	single CPU	1 MB	50 MHz	40 MHz
SM51-2	single CPU	2 MB	50 MHz	40 MHz
SM52	dual CPU	1 MB	45 MHz	40 MHz
SM52X	dual CPU	1 MB	50 MHz	40 MHz
SM61	single CPU	1 MB	60 MHz	50/55 MHz
SM61-2	single CPU	2 MB	60 MHz	50/55 MHz

SuperSPARC II (Voyager)

Model	CPU	L2 Cache	Clock Speed	Bus Speed	Notes
SM71	single CPU	1 MB	75 MHz	50 MHz
SM81	single CPU	1 MB	85 MHz	50 MHz
SM81-2	single CPU	2 MB	85 MHz	50/55 MHz
SM91-2	single CPU	2 MB	90 MHz	50 MHz

See also

• SPARCstation 10
• SPARCstation 20