Computer History Museum

SPARC microprocessor oral history panel : session one : origin and evolution

This panel discussion describes the origins and evolution of the SPARC processor at Sun. The panel consists of Anant Agrawal, Robert Garner, Bill Joy, and David Patterson. The moderator is Linley Gwennap. The discussion begins with the roots of Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC) and continues to tell why a small startup, Sun, decided to develop their own microprocessor called SPARC, Scalable Processor ARChitecture, with a RISC architecture. The panelists discuss both the technical and business challenges of this chosen path, through multiple generations of ever-increasing complexity chips. They discuss failures along with their successes and conclude with the impact of developing this new processor architecture on the industry and the ultimate success of the company.

Item Details

Date
2011-06-09 (Made)
Type
Document
Catalogue number
102745979
Organization
Computer History Museum (Publisher)
People
Anant Agrawal (Panelist)
Uday Kapoor (Speaker)
Linley Gwennap (Moderator)
David A. Patterson (Panelist)
Bill Joy (Panelist)
David House (Speaker)
Robert Garner (Panelist)
Category
Transcript
Extent
67 p.
Place of publication
USA/CA/Mountain View
Language
English
Subject
Stanford, SPARC, ARM, Fujitsu, UltraSPARC, Java, DEC, Cray, IBM, Sun, Intel, UC Berkeley, UNIX, Semiconductor History, Microprocessor, ASIC, CMOS, x86, MIPS, RISC, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), Bell Labs, 68000 microprocessor, Gallium Arsenide, HP
Archive collection
Oral history collection
Archive hierarchy
CHM Oral History Collection