[SunRescue] Ultra 1 vs. beefy Sparc 20

[James Lockwood]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> I keep seeing this UPA thing popping up, what IS it?  Sun proprietary,
> or some "standard"?  

Ultra Port Architecture.  It's the interconnect that's UltraSparcs use
internally to connect multiple CPU's and fast (Creator/Elite) framebuffers
(framebuffers use a special slave-only UPA port).

Typically runs at 67-120MHz, 64 bits.

> How fast is a Creator3D, and how cheap?

Fast.  For 2D work you get the benefit of a very fast bus (nearly 1GB/sec
in modern systems) going straight to the card as well a on-card
acceleration.  For 3D it includes a fairly fast geometry engine, so it
beats out just about every consumer PC card for doing shaded CAD type
work (most of which require the CPU to do geometry calcs).

There is no real support for h/w texturing, so that's very slow.  Sun's
cards aren't designed to push texels, they're designed to push shaded
triangles as fast as possible.  This makes it an ideal fit for running a
product like Blender.

Prices vary.  A horizontal Creator3D can go for $50-150 depending on
vendor and model.  The vertical Creator3D's (used in more modern systems)
often command $300 and up.  Ultra 1/2/450/Exxxx use horizontal cards,
Ultra 10/30/60/80/AXi use vertical cards.

-James