Past , Present , and Future of SPARC 64 Processors

SPARC64 is the name of the series of SPARC-V9 architecture processors that Fujitsu has developed. The development of the first SPARC64 started in the 1990s, and the development of the latest generation is actively ongoing as of 2011. The processor frequency of the first SPARC64 was as little as 118 MHz and it had only 20 million transistors, while the processor frequency of the latest SPARC64 VIIIfx is 2 GHz and it has more than 700 million transistors. This paper describes the history of the SPARC64 processor development, and the enhanced points of each generation.