Sun Microsystems has announced at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) that its OpenSPARC initiative has released the UltraSPARC Architecture 2005 and HyperVisor API specifications to help jumpstart the porting of Linux, BSD and other operating systems, middleware and applications to the UltraSPARC T1 processor with CoolThreads technology. The publication of these specifications will broaden the base of users who can take advantage of the performance, power and space benefits of the UltraSPARC T1 processor's massive throughput.

Sun is making the documentation available to help nurture the creation of a new chip multi-threading community, and to assist companies interested in porting operating systems and other applications to the UltraSPARC T1 processor's threaded environment. The development community now has the information needed to port Linux to the CoolThreads architecture and to take full advantage of the chip's multi-threading capabilities. Sharing UltraSPARC T1-based processor source code reflects Sun's continuing commitment to the open source development model and to offering customers greater choice.

"Today we open the door to expanding SPARC onto new platforms and into new markets, breaking down barriers to innovation and giving our customers more choice," said Jonathan Schwartz, President and Chief Operating Officer, Sun Microsystems. "Having Linux or BSD ports for the UltraSPARC T1 processor will greatly expand the SPARC market, giving customers more opportunities to reap the benefits of our CoolThreads technology. The OpenSPARC effort is fostering a community for SPARC-based, 32 thread innovation that will play a crucial role in redefining industry standards in the data center."

Kip Macy, the author of the FreeBSD port to the Xen x86 hypervisor, is excited about the opportunity to port FreeBSD to a new hypervisor on a new architecture. "The UltraSPARC T1 processor's approach to throughput computing is a refreshing change from other architectures and FreeBSD will one day be able to fully exploit the parallelism exposed by the cutting edge processor. The T1 is particularly interesting to me because I feel that its price-performance should, for the first time, make the UltraSPARC an important participant in commodity computing environments."

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