Ex-Intel, Sun chip guru brewing multichip SPARC
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 01/07/2002 at 12:06 GMT
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/25972.html)
Sun Microsystems has a closer connection to Afara Websystems, its most recent acquisition, than we realized last week.
One of Afara's co-founders is Les Kohn, one of the designers of Intel's i860 and i960 RISC chips, NatSemi's 320xx Swordfish and the UltraSPARC-I.
The secretive start-up won't say what it's doing, but announcing the news last week Sun's VP of microprocessors and network products David Yen said that it was a SPARC licensee and would be unveiling "highly innovative" boxes quite soon.
The Silicon Valley rumor mill suggests that Afara has built a multi-chip, multi-processor SPARC chip for its new networking box.
This is an approach apparently adopted by almost all the network processor vendors, but Afara's will be distinguished by being the only high-end SPARC-based offering. Which makes it fairly unique. T.sqware (which was acquired by Globespan a couple of years ago) built a low-end SPARC derivative called SPARClet, which hasn't been seen since. (All Globespan Viridana's current processors appear to be ARM based).
"A multi-chip, multi-processor SPARC may not win any SPEC benchmarks, but it would likely do very well in both price/performance and power/performance comparisons in things like server blades," a Valley mole tell us.
Kohn worked for Intel from 1982 to 1989. Between leaving Sun in 1994 and starting Afara, Kohn was chief architect at C-Cube, designing digital video compression chips.
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Debian boost as Sun buys SPARC edge start-up
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 25/06/2002 at 20:36 GMT
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/25889.html)
Sun Microsystems is buying infrastructure start-up Afara Websystems, Sun VP David Yen said today.
Afara says it produces IP traffic management systems on its one-page web site, and is backed by embedded systems investor Raza Foundries.
Afara already has a connection to Sun, employing for a while Kathirgamar Aingaran, one of the principle authors of the 64bit UltraSPARC V9 family. (V7 and 8 were the 32bit SPARCs.
When we tried Afara's company directory, Aingaran wasn't listed. But he contributed to a research paper co-authored by Sun engineers last year, in which he's listed as affiliated to Afara, so presumably this was while he was on secondment. (Kathirgamar, you're welcome to correct us).
And Afara already uses the SPARC port of Debian GNU/Linux internally. Its phone book leads us to a Ben Collins, but whether it's the Ben Collins, who was served as Debian Project Leader, we haven't been able to confirm. (Debian elects it leaders for a fixed term).
Just how much of a boost for Debian this is remains to be seen, but Sun is a Debian sponsor. And it would be daft to throw the work away.
Don't you love a good mystery?
Yen wouldn't disclose the amount Sun was paying, but said it showed Sun's commitment to SPARC.
Sun's approach to licensing embedded processors has been "come and get it", and we wondered if the Afara acquisition changed this strategy.
"We're not going to be displacing ARM," a spokesman told us. But there's more to the story than that. Edge equipment is one sector that's predicted to grow like topsy, so even a small piece of the pie would be welcome news for Sun's microprocessor division |
