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Scalable Processor Architecture (SPARC)

By Rahul Awati

What is Scalable Processor Architecture (SPARC)?

Scalable Processor Architecture (SPARC) is a 32- and 64-bit microprocessor architecture developed by Sun Microsystems in 1987. SPARC is based on reduced instruction set computing (RISC). SPARC has become a widely used architecture for hardware used with UNIX-based operating systems, including Sun's own Solaris systems. Sun made SPARC an open architecture that is available for licensing to microprocessor manufacturers.

Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation in January 2010.

With its highly scalable open architecture, SPARC is aimed at optimizing compilers and creating effective pipelines for hardware executions. SPARC implementations have also led to high execution rates and relatively short time-to-market development schedules. In addition, SPARC can be scaled up or down to substantially minimize interference and context switching time.

History of SPARC

The development of SPARC and its later versions, MicroSPARC and UltraSPARC, were the result of more than two decades of technical research and innovation. Here's a quick rundown on the SPARC development timeline:

SPARC architecture characteristics and components

SPARC features a load and store architecture wherein operations are done over registers. It uses a register window concept with a large number of registers and delay slots to optimize branch instruction. It also passes arguments using these registers and the stack.

The SPARC architecture is characterized by the following:

The SPARC architecture consists of these components:

Benefits and advantages of SPARC

SPARC's design and architecture offer many benefits. They are as follows:

SPARC also offers the following advantages:

Learn ways to approach legacy hardware maintenance and how hardware emulation tool QEMU supports x86, PowerPC, ARM and SPARC architectures.

10 Jan 2022

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