more OpenSPARC

2 Comments Published March 21st, 2006 in Free Software/Open Source, Personal.

Yep, Sun kept their promise and released the full chip design for their latest Sparc CPU under the GPLv2. You need a SPARC system with (expensive) commercial software to do anything with the design, but I still think this is a pretty significant moment.

I’m very much looking forward to what will come out of this. The chip as such is pretty amazing (32 threads, 64 bits!) – I can only dream of what people will do with the design. This could be our ultimate defense against all the DRM crap Intel & co are pushing down our collective throats. I certainly wouldn’t mind running Debian or Ubuntu on one of those puppies.

Still one more day in Switzerland – I’m heading back to Boston on Thursday. It’ll be a busy next few weeks between my brother and his wife visiting, the FSF annual membership meeting, and Linuxworld. And a short (business) trip to Berkeley thrown in as well for good measure