[rescue] Details on "Free Ultra 20" program

Mike Meredith mike at redhairy1.demon.co.uk
Sun Jul 3 11:21:35 CDT 2005


On Fri, 1 Jul 2005 17:36:50 -0500 (CDT), Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> There's a problem with that, in that SPARC64 and UltraSPARC aren't
> binary-compatible.  They'll both execute SPARCv9 code, but SPARC64
> doesn't have VIS or any of the other UltraSPARC extensions to SPARCv9.

And how much commercial software actually uses VIS and other extensions
without an unextended version ? I've taken a quick wander through some
of the commercial software I have access to, and couldn't find a binary
that required VIS out of bits of Oracle10G, SPSS, and ARCINFO. And at
least the later two could probably make use of VIS.

In Sun's words: "This complies with the SPARC International V9 Level 2
specification and provides binary compatibility with all Sun UltraSPARC
products. PRIMEPOWER systems from the PRIMEPOWER 250 to the PRIMEPOWER
2500 currently run Solaris 8 (2/02), Solaris 9 (9/03). Application
binaries developed using standard Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 APIs and ABIs
will run on PRIMEPOWER systems unmodified".

Of course Solaris 10 isn't mentioned, so there could be some problems
there.



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