SPARC (Scalable Processor ARChitecture) is a pure big-endian RISC microprocessor instruction set architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems. SPARC is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc., an organization established in 1989 to promote the SPARC and to provide conformance testing. SPARC International was intended to "open" the SPARC architecture to make a larger ecosystem for the design, which has been licensed to several manufacturers, including Texas Instruments, Cypress Semiconductor, and Fujitsu. As a result of SPARC International, the SPARC architecture is fully open and non-proprietary.

In fact, there are two fully open source implementations available. The source code (written in VHDL) of a 32-bit, single-thread SPARC Version 8 implementation called LEON is available under the LGPL. A 64-bit, 32-thread implementation that conforms to the UltraSPARC Architecture 2005 and to SPARC Version 9, called OpenSPARC T1, is also available under an open source license. The OpenSPARC T1 implementation is written in Verilog.

Implementations of the SPARC architecture were initially designed and used for workstations, and then used for larger SMP servers produced by Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu, among others. SPARC machines are generally synonymous with Solaris, the operating system (OS) from Sun designed for SPARC. However, operating systems such as NeXTSTEP, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD have been ported to systems that use SPARC processors.

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Say it ain't so AVG, say it ain't so: AVG LinkScanner = Badware?
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:11:01 -0700
The Register covered a very interesting story about AVG.  Apparently AVG is spamming the Internet with traffic that looks to be coming from Internet Explorer.  AVG software pre-crawls search results to try to protect users, but uses a user agent that makes the software appear to be Internet Explorer.  This pre-crawling is flooding websites with...
Beaches and BBQs vs. Blackberrys: Holiday weekends of the IT set
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:48:48 -0700
"Weekend? What's a weekend?" While the rest of the country is escaping their offices for a leisurely weekend, many in IT could end up back at theirs at the beep of a Blackberry. by Deb Perelman
Airport security part 4: Attack of the body scanners!
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:52:00 -0700
If you read my blog postings semi-often, you know that I'm very, very critical of problems with airport security.  Nicole Wong of the Boston Globe reported that Boston's Logan International Airport will become the next airport to implement full-body scanners (thanks for the link from the LiquidMatrix guys!) that can see...
First look at Ubuntu 8.10 - Intrepid Ibex
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:01:09 -0700
On Saturday the first alpha release of Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" was made available for download. So what's new on the horizon for Ubuntu users? by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
Getaway day: How to secure your laptop for holiday travel
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:24:20 -0700
It's getaway day and as we prepare to hit the road, trudge through airport security and snag that car rental, spare a thought for the valuable data that travels with you on that trusty old laptop. According to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute, more than...
Amid ugly job picture, tech related employment holds up
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:55:20 -0700
The U.S. economy lost 62,000 jobs in June for the sixth straight month of employment losses with an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent, but underneath the technology sector is holding up well, according to Labor Department statistics. What a difference a downturn makes. Last...

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