[OpenIndiana-discuss] OpenSolaris on SPARC

[Martin Bochnig]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:33 PM, Daniel Kjar <dkjar at elmira.edu> wrote:
> Fantastic!  I can't wait to fire up my sb1000 again!


The SB1000/2000 is my favorite workstation, too ... as I have always said:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/xwin-discuss/2008-August/002281.html
http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.sys.sun.hardware/2005-05/0232.html

These days you get the x7310a (1.2GHz III Cu) module for pennies.
And they do outperform a Dualcore SB2500 Red 1,28GHz.
Some people now think, that the Blade 1000/2000 is an electricity
waster (which is true to some degree, just make your own tests and
decide). But ironically the only other Sun SPARC Workstations that
manage to outperform the maxed out SB1000/2000 are Dual core 1.6GHz
SB2500 Silver and Ultra 45, which consume the same amount, if I can
believe these results:

http://chrysalis.rutgers.edu/hardware/powerbrief.php

And I read various reviews that confirm, that CAD users were
disappointed by the IIIi based machines, that did not deliver any
significant "feelable" performance boost over the SB1000/2000, despite
their higher clock, on-die (though much smaller) cache and faster
memory.

A look to spec confirms this:

CFP2000 Results:
SB1000/2000 IIIcu @ 1.2 GHz:
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q2/cpu2000-20030326-02001.html
SB2500Red   IIIi @ 1.28 GHz
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q4/cpu2000-20030821-02436.html
SB2500Silver IIIi @ 1.6 GHz
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2005q1/cpu2000-20050107-03681.html



> I have an xvr1200 but I have pretty much determined I will never be able to
> use that card again....


Why? The XVR-1200 is similar to a XVR-600.
I know, under Xorg it would be never supported. Maybe the best one
could expect would be unaccelerated fb mode.
However, as we now have an opensrc Xsun and redistributable binary
drivers, including redistributable /dev/fb drivers for initializing
and mapping the card, plus my changes to make the stumbled / cut-down
opened version of Xsun function again, nothing should prevent you from
using your XVR-1200. And in contrast to previous versions of modified
Xorg, if now doesn't matter anymore, into which system with what kind
of pci bridge you intend to plug your card. It should function,
period.

I know, this sounds like a dream.
And that's why we cannot ever thank Alan Coopersmith enough, that he
pushed through the opensrc release of Xsun, after it had been EOL'ed
in 2010, yet just moments before Oracle closed the tap :)



>
> Do you know what card would work best?  I have an ati radeon (xvr 100?)
> card and a couple of those monstrous creator3ds.



Any of these cards will work.
The Creator/Creator3D/Elite3D even function with Xorg's ported
Linux/BSD drivers under Xorg, that are still available on martux.org:
http://martux.org/RELEASES/FOX1.0/SPARC/
http://martux.org/RELEASES/SPARC_distro_incl_Xorg7.2/

But under Xsun every of these just functions, does so reliably and quickly.
So it rather depends on your 2D vs. 3D needs, free PCI slots vs. UPA
slots, power consumption and so on.
I in my beloved SB2000 use an Elite 3D UPA card.
Maybe the XVR-1000 (UPA) or 1200 (3D Labs Wildcat PCI) would be even faster.
But for normal office needs, any of these should be more than sufficient.






rgds.
   %mab