The Supernova server line is under development at Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

.

The UltraSPARC Rock (processor) slots into this line of servers retaining this code name. Details of the server specifications were released into Open Solaris Architecture Review

Physical resources

The Physical Resource Inventory (PRI) of the ARC 2008/761 indicates the Supernova platforms will support: IEEE 1275 OpenFirmware, platform virtualization through Logical Domains

Logical Domains

Logical Domains is the server virtualization and partitioning technology from Sun Microsystems released in April 2007. It has been re-branded as Oracle VM Server for SPARC since Oracle Corporation completed the acquisition of Sun in January 2010. Each domain is a full virtual machine with a...

 (LDOM), independent system controller (SC), and Fault Management Architecture (FMA) Domain Services. The FMA feature was originally referenced to FWARC/2006/141, but this was closed and extended in FWARC/2008/455 "to successfully diagnose PCI fabric errors that occur in root domains."

Input/Output descriptions

The iodevice Machine Description (MD) Node Specification of ARC 2008/761 indicates support for both PCI Express

PCI Express

PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...

 (PCIe) hot-pluggable slots as well as a bridge to older PCI eXtended (PCI-X

PCI-X

PCI-X, short for PCI-eXtended, is a computer bus and expansion card standard that enhances the 32-bit PCI Local Bus for higher bandwidth demanded by servers. It is a double-wide version of PCI, running at up to four times the clock speed, but is otherwise similar in electrical implementation and...

).

Input/Output expandability

Hitendra Zhangada described a variety of PCIe parameters in software which support the hardware platforms. Bronze servers would support PCIe slots 0-5. Silver servers would support I/O boats 0-1 and PCIe slots 0-7 for each boat. Platinum servers support I/O boats 0-3 and PCIe slots 0-7 for each boat. Silver-II servers support PCIe slots 00-19. Platinum-II servers support boards 0-7 and slots 0-3 for each board.

Common features

Hitendra Zhangada, SPS Common SW Features Engineering, at Software Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. wrote an email on December 9 in 2008 sponsoring a fast-track software ARC case describing Supernova platforms AT480 and AT880. Ravi Subbarao of Sun Microsystems, Director of Enterprise Systems Software, sponsored ARC 2008/761. The email described platforms bindings and interface changes: in MD, PRI and OpenBoot device node.

AT7180

There is a speculated SPARC Enterprise AT7180, as a single socket model. It is a future model speculated to handle as many as 32 hardware threads.

AT7280

There is a speculated SPARC Enterprise AT7280, as a dual socket model. It is a future model speculated to handle as many as 64 hardware threads.

AT7480

The Supernova Silver-II model received the name SPARC Enterprise AT7480 is a quad socket model. It is a future model reported to handle as many as 128 hardware threads. The AT7480 is based upon the PCI Express bus architecture with an OpenFirmware.

AT7880

The Supernova Platinum-II, an octal socket model, received the name SPARC Enterprise AT7880. It is a future model reported to handle as many as 256 hardware threads. The AT7880 is based upon the PCI Express bus architecture with an OpenBoot firmware. Pingchung Lee, Responsible Engineer for ARC 2008/761 explains in a December 10 email in 2008 that the AT7880 has eight individual CPU boards and each CPU board has one Sun Neptune

Sun Neptune

Neptune, also known as Sun Multithreaded 10 GbE, is a dual 10 Gbit/s, multithreaded, PCIe x8-based network card. It was developed and originally produced by Sun Microsystems, and later licensed to Marvell....

multithreaded 10 Gigabit Ethernet chip on-board.