Skip the navigation
)
News

Oracle provides Sparc road map, but questions linger

By James Niccolai
August 10, 2010 04:57 PM ET

IDG News Service - Oracle has sketched out a five-year road map for Sun's Sparc-based servers, hoping to reassure customers about the future of the platform and reverse a pattern of declining sales.

John Fowler, the former Sun executive who runs Oracle's systems business, laid out the plans in a webcast from Oracle's headquarters Tuesday morning. In an interview beforehand, he also confirmed reports that Oracle has stopped designing x86-based servers with chips from Advanced Micro Devices, and has standardized on Intel processors.

Oracle will release regular updates to Sun's Sparc processors for at least the next five years, and "at least double application performance every other year" on Sparc-based systems, Fowler said. Sparc servers will scale from 32 cores and 4TB of memory today, to 128 cores and 64TB of memory by 2015, he said.

Fowler also announced that Solaris 11, the next big update to Sun's Solaris OS, will ship next year. It will include "major updates across almost every level of the stack," he said, including elements of Sun's Project Crossbow network virtualization technology. Solaris 11 will scale to "tens of terabytes of memory and thousands of processor threads," he said.

It was important for Oracle to articulate a road map for Sun's Sparc-based systems, sales of which have fallen sharply amid the uncertainty around Oracle's acquisition of Sun. Oracle has said from the start it will continue to develop Sparc but it has been light on the details.

Even after Tuesday some questions remained. Oracle has two families of Sparc processors -- the multi-threaded Ultrasparc chips that it develops in-house for its T series servers, and the Sparc64 chips manufactured by Fujitsu and sold in Oracle's high-end M series servers.

Fowler didn't address the two chip lines specifically, referring only to the future of Sparc in general. One analyst said Oracle may eventually use the Ultrasparc chips across both server families, the M series and the T series.

"If I look in my tea leaves, I would say over the next few years all of those systems -- the T series and the M series -- are likely to be built around the Sparc chips Oracle is designing in-house," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64.

Such a move could reduce Oracle's development costs and give it complete control over the design of its servers. It could produce variations of the Ultrasparc chip, using different interconnects and cache sizes, for example, to make them suitable for the M series servers, Brookwood said.

Asked before the webcast about specific plans for the two chip families, Fowler said he would be talking "generically about Sparc." The two platforms are based on the same underlying architecture and can run the exact same software, so customers "aren't focused on that," he said.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Don't have an account yet?
Additional Resources
Security KnowledgeVault
WHITE PAPER
Security is not an option. This KnowledgeVault Series offers professional advice how to be proactive in the fight against cybercrimes and multi-layered security threats; how to adopt a holistic approach to protecting and managing data; and how to hire a qualified security assessor. Make security your Number 1 priority.

Read now.

Cut Communications Costs Once and for All
WHITE PAPER
New IP-based communications systems are being deployed by small and midsized businesses at a rapid rate. Learn how these organizations are enabling faster responsiveness, creating better customer experiences, speeding office or mobile interactions, and dramatically reducing existing communications costs.

Read now.

Hardware White Papers
Gary Watson, CTO, Nexsan: 6 Tips for Selecting Hard Drives
What type of drives should be used for what types of data? Selecting a drive and interface can seem complex with considerations of...
10 Reasons to Modernize the Desktop
Learn how to enhance your business through VMware View
The Laptop Dilemma: How to Maximize Productivity and Lower the Burden on IT
Download Now
Practice Management: Double Billing Rate and Improve Patient Services
Would you like to double your billing rate and achieve faster payment for services?

Download this customer success story to see how One Health...
Mission Critical Data Explosion and Customer Case Study
Would you like to double your tier 1 storage capacity while simultaneously reducing your storage footprint?

Download this customer success story to see how...
All Hardware White Papers
Hardware Webcasts
Distributed Database Security with Real-time Monitoring
View this demo and learn how IBM InfoSphere Guardium database activity monitoring can help protect your sensitive data in distributed DBMS environments with...
InfoSphere Warehouse Packs Demo
These flash modules make warehousing more tangible and relevant to business users through detailed explanations of the InfoSphere Warehouse Packs.
Delivery Management -- Extending Lifecycle Management
Date: Wednesday, June 20, 2012, 1:00 PM EDT

Siloed organizations continue doing the wrong things and doing things wrong, leading to increased costs,...
Leverage automation today to reduce IT complexity
Date: Tuesday, June 5, 2012, 2:00 PM EDT

Whether your B2B complexity is caused by multiple technologies due to M&A, business or application specific...
Redefine Expectations in the Data Center
Need to do more with less? Watch this video to learn how HP ProLiant Gen8 servers can help your business deploy servers three...
All Hardware Webcasts
Newsletter Sign-Up

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all newsletters | Privacy Policy
IT Jobs