Is the SPARC architecture still relevant as a JIT compiler target on high-end servers?

Question

X86 and AMD64 are the most important architectures for many computing environments (desktop, servers, and supercomputers). Obviously a JIT compiler should support both of them to gain acceptance.

Until recently, the SPARC architecture was the logical next step for a compiler, specially on high-end servers markets. But now that Sun is dead, things are not clear.

Oracle doesn't seem to be really interested in it, and some big projects are dropping support for that architecture (Ubuntu for example). But on the other hand, the OpenSPARC initiative intended to open source recent processors is quite promising, meaning that a lot of manufacturers could implement and use SPARC for free in the near future.

So, is SPARC still a good choice as the next target architecture for a JIT compiler? Or is it better to choose another one (POWER, ARM, MIPS, ...)?

Answer 1

I don't know any more than you about SPARC's future. I hope it has one; it's been tragic how many good architectures have died out while x86 has kept going.

But i would suggest you look at ARM as a target. It isn't present in big server hardware, but it's huge in the mobile market, and powers all sorts of interesting little boxes, like my NAS, my ADSL router, and so on.

Answer 2

Your next target architecture should definitely be ARM - power consumption in large datacenters are a huge issue and the next big thing will be trying to reduce that by using low-power CPUs; see Facebook's first attempt on this.