Difference between sun4, sun4c and sun4m subarchitectures

[Jochen Kunz]

On Fri, 19 Nov 04 19:32:13 GMT
msokolov at ivan.harhan.org (Michael Sokolov) wrote:

> Does anyone know what are the real technical differences between sun4,
> sun4c and sun4m subarchitectures of SPARC from the viewpoint of an OS
> kernel writer? 
I am not entirely sure, but I think the differences are in in the CPU
cache, the MMU, the IO architecture (sun4 VME, sun4c SBus) and sun4m is
based on SPRAC V8 CPUs where the older sun4 / sun4c is based on V7 CPUs.
This is a bit simplified. E.g. the SM100 MBus CPU module is for sun4m
machines but has two V7 CPUs. Also: The sun4/6xx CPU boards are sun4m
with VME _and_ SBus. In addition they are the first and only sun4m CPU
boards with VME.

Not to talk about sun4d or Solburn (?) machines...

I know you don't like it, but maybe the NetBSD kernel source is a help.

Google for a file named "sun.hardware.FAQ"...
-- 


tschüß,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/