[rescue] Sun 711

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Thu, 2 May 2002 dave at cca.org wrote:
> 
> >Also you can pick up some SPARC references, since this is a SUN list
> >right? And play with the assembler. SPARC is not as elegant as the MIPS
> >but it can easily be coupled with THE BOOK. (Hennesy was one of the main
> >cheeses in the early development of MIPS and Stanford, and Patterson was
> >the main guy behind RISC-I at Cal, which later evolved into SPARC).
> 
> Was there ever RISC-I silicon? Or was SPARC the first actual
> implimentation?

RISC-I was an actual chip, not just an architecture. It was implemented in
5u NMOS (area = 77mm^2), with just 44K transistors. And I think they had
it running at 1MHZ. They used to have a big poster with the original mask
in Soda hall (I think...maybe it was Cory hall). RISC-II was also
implemented in silicon in 83 or 84 not sure. They did not have FPU though,
so the small number of transistors is not that amazing after that. Still
it managed to show a lot of the ideas that we take for granted nowadays...

Cheers