MicroSparc II supplies tight; 85MHz parts sampling

Electronic News, Feb 21, 1994 by Reinhardt Krause

MOUNTAIN VEIW, CALIF. -- The wait may soon be over the OEMs trying to obtain samples of Sun's MicroSparc II, which is being manufactured by Fujitsu. In the meantime, Fujitsu has pushed the MicroSparc Ii to 85MHz speeds.

Although Fujitsu last week said it was "on schedule and meeting all of Sun's demands," other sources indicated that the MicroSparc II has been available in meager amounts since being announced by Sun last year (EN, Oct. 18, 1993). At the time, Sun said the MicroSparc II was sampling at 70MHz speeds based on Fujitsu's three-layer-metal, 0.5 micron CMOS process.

Peter VonClemm, Sun's strategic marketing manager for microprocessors, attributed the tight supply to "a rigorous debug cycle" as well as to a normal lag between initial sampling and moving system designs into production. He said Fujitsu's 0.5 micron process is mature, and not a factor at all in the part's availability.

"We have a backlog and we're shipping against that backlog," he said. "clearly we're in the middle of a ramp. I don't know how many hundreds of parts we've has available to outside customers."

As of now, the MicroSparc II is not in full production volumes; however, Mr. VonClemm confirmed Sun will be ready to ship new systems that will be announced in March.

"From a chip-verification perspective, once you have silicon there is a path to making sure it works for all applications and operating systems and everything else. We're on track," Mr. VonClemm added. "Even though you're sampling functional parts, you keep working to improve yields, to shrink dies as much as possible. So we can make a decision not to go into production until our customers really need the stuff."

Meanwhile, Fujitsu is getting good yields at 85MHz as well, Mr. VonClemm said. The 85MHz parts began to sample in beta units this month. "Some people don't know about it," Mr. VonClemm said. "We haven't made an announcement."

Still, rumors about the MicroSparc II's availability are circulating in the industry. At Tadpole Technology, which this week is rolling out its SparcBook 3 portable workstation based on Tex > Instruments' 50MHz MicroSparc (see page 34), the Fujitsu-manufactured part is in scare supply. Geoffrey Burr, president of Tadpole, said the MicroSparc II CPU is still sampling in "infinitesimal amounts."

Mr. VonClemm, however, felt Tadpole's decision was motivated by the availability of TAB packaging for TI's processor; the MicroSparc II uses plastic packaging. "I'd be surprised if Tadpole wanted the MicroSparc Ii right now," he said.

Opus System this week will introduce its MicroSparc II-based In-Board Engine/MS2, which will ship in April. TRhe In-Board/MS2 is based on a 70/85MHz MicroSparc Ii chipset; the 70MHz part is rated at 51 SPECint92 and 43 SPECfp92.

Sources at Opus said the company was surprised it has announced MicroSparc II-based products ahead of Sun. "We actually have working boards and are making beta shipments to customers of the Microsparc II running Solaris 2.3," said on Opus source. "We do have small quantities of sampling parts that we have been able to wring out our hardware on. And get beta quantities to customers that have been in a queue for it. We are confident that the dam has been burst. The date got pushed back and pushed back but the dam has burst and (MicroSparc II) production quantities are if not available now, imminent."

Mr. VonClemm offered some insights into the MicroSparc II's availability. He said Opus initially ordered 10 processors; when a janitor mistakenly threw them out, Opus asked for six more. "We didn't have them laying around, we were expecting them in three days," Mr VonClemm said, adding that for customers asking for 10 samples or less, the normal turn-around is about 10 days. "Six parts doesn't sound like a lot, but if you've made commitments to a lot of people, you commit every piece as they come through. Three days later we could have given them 50."

Sources at another company close to Sun said of MicroSparc II availability: "We haven't heard anyone say they actually received any. Some of our customer are pursuing getting samples. There are initial quantities, but they're just not able to get anything yet. I don't know of anyone who has received them to date."

According to some industry observers, Sun and Fujitsu may be attempting to push the MicroSparc's performance as much as possible before making it widely available. When Sun announced that Fujitsu would manufacture the microprocessor, early silicon samples were, in fact, expected in late 1993.

TI's MicroSparc processor is available at 50MHz and the company is working on higher speeds. Last year, Sun claimed it had obtained silicon on MicroSparc II parts not yet in production operating at more than 90MHz and even up to 100MHz.

Mr. VonClemm said he expected Sun to offer MicroSparc II at 100MHz speeds in the future. He said there was no problem in pushing the MicroSparc II's performance, because TI's upcoming SuperSparc, although targeted at 100MHz speeds as well, is relly geared for multiprocessing with external cache capability. "We're not going to keep MicroSparc Ii down," he said, "We'll bring MicroSparc II out at whatever it will perform at and there are some shrinks in process planned."