Scalable Processor Architecture

(spark)

A Sun Microsystems-developed RISC technology going back to the 1985 timeframe. SPARC is now a trademark of SPARC International, an organization that licenses the term and directs its evolution and standaridization.

SPARC designs usually contain 128 or 144 registers; 32 being available at a time. For each function call the 32 register window moves 16 which allows 8 registers available to share between functions (e.g., for passing data). However, SPARC is scalable; the register stack can be increased to 512 if necessary.

There are a number of SPARC implementations as SPARC itself is a specification and not a particular piece of hardware.

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• SPARC Home