OpenSPARC is anopen-source hardware project, started in December 2005, for CPUs implementing theSPARC instruction architecture. The initial contribution to the project wasSun Microsystems'register-transfer level (RTL)Verilog code for a full64-bit, 32-threadmicroprocessor, theUltraSPARC T1 processor. On March 21, 2006, Sun released thesource code to the T1IP core under theGNU General Public License v2. The full OpenSPARC T1 system consists of 8 cores, each one capable of executing four threads concurrently, for a total of 32 threads. Each core executes instruction in order and its logic is split among 6 pipeline stages.
On December 11, 2007, Sun also made theUltraSPARC T2 processor's RTL available via the OpenSPARC project.[1] It was also released under the GNU General public license v2.[2] OpenSPARC T2 is 8 cores, 16 pipelines with 64 threads.
