I'm a newcomer,i know little about chip design,but i eagerly want to study the OpenSPARC,is there anyone can tell me how to study OpenSPARC step by step?For example,you may tell me firstly to setup an envionment to open the source,or maybe i have to read the some documents,then maybe i have to choice a specific topic such as the TLB,and so on.
Thanks.
Good overview of OpenSPARC Microarchitecture can be found in this paper -
http://www.opensparc.net/publications/technical-papers/
"Niagara: A 32-Way Multithreaded SPARC Processor", Poonacha et al.
You may also download "OpenSPARC T1 Micro Architecture Specification" from
http://opensparc-t1.sunsource.net/index.html
Once you get high level understanding of the design, you can download the source-code and try running some diagnostics supplied with the OpenSPARC T1 bundle. Depending on your area of interest, you can then choose the area you want to understand in more depth.
Good luck.
