Open Sparc Training, Bandung 8-9 June 2009

So, yesterday i attend OPEN SPARC training at my university. This program is held by a collaboration of Institut Teknologi Bandung, Universitas Gadjah Mada, and Sun Microsystem. This training is about OPEN SPARC program from SUN. If you ever heard about open source software, this thing is an identical form but it run on hardware, not software.. What SUN’s open in this OPEN SPARC program is ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) of their processor (Ultra Sparc T1, Ultra Sparc T2, etc). This 2 days seminar lecturer is Mr David Weaver (principal engineer of Ultra Sparc processor and principal evangelist of Open Sparc) and Mr Karsten (compiler engineer) from SUN Microsystem.

These 2 day seminar consist of 2 main section, which is 1 day long for each session. First session (day 1, 8th june 2009) give us information about Open Sparc history and Hardware specification of open sparc processor (ultra sparc t1, big part of ultra sparc t2, etc). And the second session (day 2, 9th june 2009) give us information about software that this program use, compiler, open solaris, etc.

At the day 1, there is a question in my mind “why the open their processor? is it dangerous for them?”. But, that question didn’t last long. Mr weaver told us that opening hardware is a bit different than open software. In open source software we post a source code, the next day our competitor may publish their new product with our source code as a part of their release. But, in open hardware (ISA) it takes a little bit longer. Why longer? because it takes a time to implement, verify, test, produce, and  finalizing their product, And it takes about 1 year to complete these step. Of course sun have confident that during that time they can innovate newer technology. Plus, in technology industries timing is a big factor, mr weaver said that “if your product 1 month late in market penetration, means that you must have 5% better aspect than your early competitor. And it’s really expensive to make that happen”. Imagine if they need about 1 year to develope new product, how much better for their product capabilities to compete against SUN. SUN is secure with this “open” thing.

The truth is we will not get their latest technology in this Open Sparc program, we only get 2nd layer technology from them. For example, we get ultra sparc T2 ISA and technologies, but we don’t get the cryptographic chip design, and during this time, sun is developing a new project called “rock”. BUT, we still have huge advantage with this program. For instance japan built their government supercomputer scientific project using ultraspac t1 platform. And for note, sun don’t give their T2’s cryptographic capabilities design to us because it’s under patent of US government. I think it’s a very advantage of us to adopt and use this Open Sparc chance.

There are several advantages for us in order to use this open sparc thing. they are :

1. Lower cost of research

- with this program we don’t need to develop our own processor from zero. It mean increase our productivity, cutting our time consume, and for the impact of that, decrease our cost of research greatly.

2. Inspiration tank

- this program members are spread along the world, and you can use their research about these sparc freely, and who knows you will have a critical inspiration from this thing.

3. Lower start up company expense

- the biggest expense from technology’s start up company is its facility and development tools. with this program you can get complete tools from a to z freely (Correct Me If I’m Wrong).

4. Wide aplication of processor

- open sparc t1 is powerful enough to built supercomputer (with “this and that” modification of course), imagine what you can build with this privilege.

At the second day, the speaker has switched to mr karsten, he explain us about the compiler. I don’t undestand to much about this thing, but i amaze about open solaris. This operating system is georgeus! we can profile our code, and optimize our CMT (core multi threading) processor with making application code for CMT (open MP, etc).

The ultra sparc T2 have a great feature, it named hypervisor. Have you ever heard about dual boot or virtual box? the purpose of these two feature is to have multi Operating System in one computer. In dual boot, we can only select one operating system to operate at one time. In virtual box we have a big advance in multi operating system. We can run operating system 2 above operating system 1. Operating system 2 get its system source from operating system 1. The trade off of virtual box is aplication that the operating system 2 performance can’t be maximum. The other trade off is if the operating system 1 crash the operating system 2 will also crash due to its run on operating system 1.

Open Sparc T2 offer a great solution for this, called hypervisor. In this hypervisor, we can run multiple operating system concurrently. If in the usual computer system operating system can access memory, they can’t do it in the hypervisor. The hypervisor system is a system 1 layer above the hardware (CMIIW). They control the device usage for the operating system, so that the operating system can get their full usage of hardware (not slowing down) and not crash each other. Hypervisor can also conditioning so that if 1 operating system crash or down, the other system still can do their task normally.

Here are schematics for the system above :

1. dual boot

==hardware

==== operating system 1 or operating system 2’s  boot (choose one)

======operating system 1 or 2

2. virtual box

==hardware

====operating system 1’s boot

======operating system 1

========virtual box

==========operating system 2’s boot

============operating system 2

3. hypervisor

==hardware

====hypervisor

======operating system 1’s boot

========operating system 1

======operating system 2’s boot

========operating system 2

for further information you may visit :

www.opensparc.net

www.opensolaris.org/os/

A Few Introduction from Me

Hi there, my name is wahidyan kresna fridayoka. I currently study in Electrical Engineering at Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia. The raise of this blog is to share my knowledge and passion about engineering, with electrical and computer engineering as the main focus of this blog’s content.

You may find that my english is bad (because i dont have sufficient english grammar expertise to write a nice post), and i really apologize if you find that. I’ll try to improve my english from time to time.

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-wahidyankf-