[Sunhelp] SM61 CPU

[James Lockwood]

On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> Can anybody point me to a page with some specs on this CPU?  I've been told
> that it's in a SS20, but I'd like to see some numbers on it, and/or hear how
> people feel about it speed/architecture wise.  Thanks,

It's a SuperSPARC chip with up to 3-way issue that runs at 60MHz with 1mb
of e-cache.  It's the earlier SuperSPARC-I line (as opposed to the SM71
and SM81 which use SuperSPARC-II and are therefore somewhat faster than
their clock speeds would indicate).

It should run in any mbus machine (SS600, SS10, SS20 and clones), though
early SS600's may require a boot PROM upgrade.

It's got a pretty good bang for the buck.  Now that SM71's are around
$300/ea and SM81's are in the $400-450 range, the SM61's are pretty
attractive in the sub-$200 area.

Here's how they stack up (SS10 scores will be around 20% lower):

System            CPU        ClkMHz  Cache      SPECint SPECfp  Info
Name              (NUMx)Type ext/in  Ext+I/D      92      92    Date
================= ========== ======= ========== ======= ======= =====
Sun SS20/50       SuprSP     50      20/16        76.9    80.1  May95
Sun SS20/61       SuprSP     50/60   1M+20/16     98.2   107.2  May95
Sun SS5/70        MicroSP2   70      16/8         57.0    47.3  Mar94
Sun SS5/85        MicroSP2   85      16/8         65.3    53.1  May95
Sun SS5/110       MicroSP2   110     16/8         78.6    65.3  May95
Sun Ultra1/140    UltraSP    71/143  512+16/16   215     303    Nov95

It's a nice, decent CPU.  I'd have a tough time deciding between a dual
SM51 and a single SM61 in a SS20, as the SM51 will lower the mbus clock to
40MHz.

I ran a pair of SM61's in my old SS10 for a year and was very happy with
them.

-James