Re(2): [SunRescue] Ultrasparc CPU dismantling

[Chris Kozlowski]

This is all true, however, if the chip is rated for a particular speed,
it essentially means that in the correct environment -- heat sink, fan,
etc -- it will be happy running at this speed and the inherent heat
it generates.  Thus, a 360 mhz processor on a 333 mhz module board
would probably run fine if it is possible to trick it into running
at 360.  Those of us from the PC world familiar with overclocking
also know how to build a mean cooling system *grin*  

I'm amazed at how small the UltraSPARC itself is.  It is half the
size of an old Pentium.

Maybe as a little experiment I should take a 270, drop it into a 333
board, and run it for a while.  Is the cache on the cpu itself or on
the module board?

Now I have to go futz around with a 6500 though... *sigh*  what
a rough life I lead!

Chris


> From an electronic standpoint, CPU timing is a piece of cake, just a
> simple little oscillator circuit.  unfortunately, that isn't all you need
> to worry about.  In the PC world, overclocking is fairly easy if you buy
> good parts, because there is so much junk out there the standards are well
> below the timing capabilities of good pieces. On a real computer :-) the
> timing tolerances of the memory bus, the various other interfaces to the
> CPU  are not as sloppy.  If you speed up the processor you also have to
> take into consideration all the other pieces on the processor card, which
> probably includes cache, and maybe some kind of interrupt buffering, and
> who knows what else.  The other thing which people are always talking
> about on this list relating to sparcs is heat dissipation, the faster it
> goes, the hotter it runs.  Overclocking won't kill a chip, it will just
> get to a speed and quit working, but heat will kill it dead.
> 
> 
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