With the SPARC (Scalable Processor ARChitecture) architecture and system software as the underlying foundation, Sun Microsys terns is delivering a new model of computing-easy workgroup computing-to enhance the way people work, automating processes across groups, departments, and teams locally and globally. Sun and a large and growing number of companies in the computer industry have embarked on a new approach to meet the needs of computer users and system developers in the 1990s. Originated by Sun, the approach targets users who need a range of compatible computer systems with a variety of application soft ware and want the option to buy those systems from a choice of vendors. The approach also meets the needs of system developers to be part of a broad, growing market of compatible systems and software-developers who need to design products quickly and cost-effecti vel y. The SPARe approach ensures that computer systems can be easy to use for all classes of users and members of the workgroup, end users, system administrators, and software developers. For the end user, the SPARC technologies facilitate system set-up and the daily use of various applications. For the system administrator supporting the computer installation, setting up and monitoring the network are easier. For the software developer, there are ad vanced development tools and support. Furthermore, the features of the SPARC hardware and software technologies ensure that SPARC systems and applications play an important role in the years to come.

This in-depth guide to Version 8 SPARC, a high-speed RISC computer chip, provides the reader with the background, design philosophy, high-level features and implementations of this new model. Includes an expanded index of terms for easy reference and a table of synthetic instructions added to the suggested assembly language syntax.

SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is the industry's only openly defined and evolved RISC architecture. Version 9 is the new 64-bit incarnation of SPARC - the most significant change since SPARC's introduction in 1987! Unlike other RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) designs, SPARC specifies not a hardware implementation ("chip"), but an open, standard architecture belonging to the community of SPARC vendors and users. The SPARC specification is defined by the SPARC Architecture Committee, a technical arm of the computer-maker consortium, SPARC International. Version 9 provides 64-bit data and addressing, support for fault tolerance, fast context switching, support for advanced compiler optimizations, efficient design for Superscalar processors, and a clean structure for modern operating systems. The V9 architecture supplements, rather than replaces, the 32-bit Version 8 architecture. The non-privileged features of Version 9 are upward-compatible from Version 8, so 32-bit application software can execute natively, without modification, on Version 9 systems - no special "compatibility mode" is required. Publication of the Version 9 architecture marks a three-year development effort by SPARC International member companies from a broad cross-section of disciplines.

The Technology of Sun M icrosystems Two years ago, Sun Microsystems began publishing a quarterly tech nical journal, Sun Technology: The Journal for Sun Users. Since then, its pages have explored in detail diverse technology and products relating to Sun. The journal's technically sophisticated readers are likely to apply the information published in the journal to their work. Sun Technology has been written by technologists for technologists. In the pages of The Sun Technology Papers, you will find an extensive selection of those articles. No other single volume offers you such a broad view of Sun-related technology and products. Yet this sweeping embrace of subjects does not diminish the level of detail in this collection. Short of Sun's 40 pounds or so of documentation, no other single source provides as deep and broad an understanding of Sun technology as this book does. Because Sun is a key developer in so many areas of computer technology, the book comprises four general sections. The first, "Soft ware," includes chapters on Open Network Computing, Sun's compil ers, SunOS and SPARC, and the Network Software Environment. The "Hardware" section covers SPARC in great detail and includes the most in-depth examination of the popular SPARCstation 1. This sec tion also contains chapters on the Sun386i workstation.

With its many beautiful colour pictures, this book gives fascinating insights into the unusual forms and behaviour of matter under extremely high pressures and temperatures. These extreme states are generated, among other things, by strong shock, detonation and electric explosion waves, dense laser beams, electron and ion beams, hypersonic entry of spacecraft into dense atmospheres of planets and in many other situations characterized by extremely high pressures and temperatures. Written by one of the world's foremost experts on the topic, this book will inform and fascinate all scientists dealing with materials properties and physics and also serve as an excellent introduction to plasma-, shock-wave and high-energy-density physics for students and newcomers seeking an overview. This second edition is thoroughly revised and expanded, in particular with new material on high energy-density physics, nuclear explosions and other nuclear transformation processes.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on High Performance Computing, HiPC 2000, held in Bangalore, India in December 2000. The 46 revised papers presented together with five invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 127 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on system software, algorithms, high-performance middleware, applications, cluster computing, architecture, applied parallel processing, networks, wireless and mobile communication systems, and large scale data mining.