Sun and Oracle Release Fastest OLTP and Data Warehouse Appliance

On Tuesday, Sun and Oracle announced the Oracle Exadata V2 OLTP and Data Warehouse appliance. This appliance replaces the previous generation Exadata appliance built on HP equipment and uses all Sun hardware. This includes Sun Galaxy x64 servers (X4170 & X4275), Sun FlashFire Storage, and Sun's own fully non-blocking Infiniband switches integrated into Sun cabinets for easy expansion. The end result is an appliance able to blow away the competition completely and utterly on OLTP and Data Warehouse workloads. In the webcast link above, Ellison and Fowler make great jabs at IBM and demonstrate significant savings over over 5 times. Each fully configured cabinet can perform over a million IOPS, ridiculously insane as Fowler said. Without a doubt, this is a strong endorsement of Sun technology and demonstrates how Sun and Oracle will work together going forward. Also think the new Sun/Oracle logo looks great! To think we'll see more in next month when Oracle demonstrates how Sun T5440's and Oracle 11g can beat the pants off of IBM and Power6!

SPARC Roadmap Leaked

Well the Register has an interesting article that leaks a slide of the SPARC processor roadmap. While most of the info there is not new to those who are customers or pay attention to conferences, it's still a great read and shows how Sun/Oracle has realigned the roadmap without the UltraSPARC-RK "Rock" processor in the mix. Some interesting points from the slide are:

• Transition from 40->28nm process thanks to TSMC.
• Only minor speed-ups for SPARC64 Jupiter CPU's until 2012.
• APL2 will arrive in 2012. Would assume this would be centered around the SPARC64-VIII "Venus" processors.
• Rainbow Falls @ 1.67Ghz, 16 cores with 8 threads each, 1-4 socket servers.
• Yosemite Falls @ 2.5Ghz, 8 cores with 8 thread each, 1-4 socket servers.
• Yellowstone Falls @ 3Ghzs, 4 cores with 8 threads, 4-192 socket servers!
• Cascade Falls @ 3Ghzs, 16 cores with 8 threads, 1-8 socket servers.

As you can see, the SPARC64 roadmap is much slower, even though it is using the Venus processor in the Project Keisoku super-computer project for the Japanese government. With APL2 not arriving until 2012, it may not be the primary future focus for Sun/Oracle.

Which brings us to the follow on processors for Rainbow Falls. Looks like we'll see fewer cores with Yosemite Falls and Yellowstone Falls. However, look at Yellowstone Falls, it can scale up to 192 sockets!! This may become the replacement for what ROCK should have been. I doubt that the lessons learned from ROCK will be lost and if anything enhance the CMT line-up. Looks like Sun/Oracle will be able to fill up the volume, mid-range, and perhaps even high-end servers with CMT processors. I would have to assume that single-threaded performance will finally be addressed. And with clock speeds going into the 3Ghz range, we should see some significant performance increases.

Considering the performance benchmarks for Oracle products on CMT, it makes sense that Oracle would place the recently promised increase in SPARC development on CMT. This would give the biggest return on investment as the vast majority of Oracle products today are already multi-threaded and scalable.

Oracles Reveals Intentions for Solaris and SPARC, Watch out IBM!

Finally! We are starting to see more coming out of Oracle about their intentions for Solaris and SPARC. This re-enforces what Larry Ellison had stated earlier in the year that Oracle would increase the investment in Solaris and SPARC. This is great news to Sun customers and of course bad news for IBM and HP who were hoping to make further gains on spreading FUD. Now we just have to wait for the outcome of the EU investigation into the merger, which is centered around MySQL. Once that is sorted out, I fully expect to see a major shake-down at Sun and a huge increase in staffing and resourcing on key products, which is badly needed. This should help bring more hope to customers and users alike. Solaris and SPARC will continue on!

Flash Storage?

It would appear that Sun will be announcing a single rack unit flash storage array with SAS interfaces, battery backup, and 80 flash modules. Without a doubt this is a huge leap forward, even for a JBOD. The performance and capacity could be used for all sorts of applications from accelerating databases, messaging, HPC applications, image or audio processing, to mundane things like VTL caching. This will be Sun's first step into selling products that could very well change the storage landscape. These same flash modules could be leveraged on larger arrays or even internal storage for servers. I have no doubt that Oracle will leverage this kind of technology with integrated high-performance database appliances.

UltraSPARC-RF Details

Recently at the HotChips Conference, details about the next generation UltraSPARC Coolthreads processor, UltraSPARC-RF or Rainbow Falls as it is known, has been released. It is interesting that the designation is now RF and not KT. The presentations are focused on the challenges with creating a 16-core processor and the cryptographic technology that is embedded with the processor. Definitely a great read and insight into how Rainbow Falls works and what is in store for the future.

The most interesting parts deal with the cache coherency, flow-control, and the inter-node SMP coherency. Having servers with these processors will enable the CMT line to reach beyond the T5440 to the mid-range and possibly high-end server segments. With each processor having 16 cores and 8 threads, a 4-way server would have 64 cores and 512 threads. I would imagine that with the split coherency plane and cross-bar switch, one may be able to glue at least 4 UltraSPARC-RF processors with zero cost in specialized ASICs. This could significantly reduce the costs and complexity of such platforms up to 4 sockets. Beyond that, a specialized high-speed and low-latency interconnect would be required, as is the case on the T5440 today. It does beg the question if it's possible to create larger servers that could scale out across some standardized interconnect, perhaps Infiniband, to create modular SPARC servers capable of scaling out.

Of course a lot of details are left out in the presentations on the features of the Rainbow Falls processor. Some of the questions that come to mind are:

• The NCU is depicted in one slide. Is that the integrated 10Gb Ethernet controller?
• Is PCI-E v3.0 with PCI-IOV integrated? (This is still in the works from the PCI-SIG)
  
• Given the distributed and even heat profile of the die, will the processor fit into a typical air-cooled envelope?
• What process is the processor implemented in? (32nm or smaller?)
• What is the power envelope?
• Will DDR3 or FB-DIMMs be used?
• How will the cache coherency affect cache trashing in LDoms?
• How will the processor perform against T2 or SPARC64?
• How will it perform against single-threaded applications?
• What kind of clock speed would be deliverable with this architecture?
  
• Will this be manufactured by TI or TSMC?

Unfortunately, we'll have to wait to see how things will play out with the server line-up for Rainbow Falls. But it would stand to reason that this will be the workhorse for future CMT servers.

DoJ Approves Sun Acquisition

This is a little old and I apologize. But the US Dept. of Justice has approved the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle. This brings the acquisition a step closer to completing since the share holders have already given approval. Now it is up to the EU to give approval and things can proceed to completion. Of course there has been a lot of speculation in the news as to Oracles commitment to Sun products, in particular SPARC and Solaris. Beyond the words spoken by Larry to Reuters very little has been stated publicly. Of course it's the right thing to do until everything is approved and completed. However, there are some glimpses into how Oracle will position Sun and Oracle products together.

Probably the best that is just starting to get attention is a pre-announcement of comparison of Sun Solaris SPARC servers outperforming the highest-end configured IBM Power configuration on the TCP-C transaction benchmark. It's this kind of marketing that Sun has desperately needed over the years. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until October 14 to find out more about the findings and details. Of course to those who have deployed large Oracle databases, this is no surprised as Sun servers are cheaper and perform just as well, if not better than the IBM Power servers in real-world usage. But the important things to pick up on this bit of marketing information are:

• Oracle is serious about positioning Solaris and SPARC with its software.
• Oracle wants to go "head-to-head" with IBM.
• Oracle will spend marketing money and effort on proving the value of Sun and Oracle products.
  
• Oracle is very serious about selling integrated products.

Also, if you look closely at the picture, you'll be able to tell that the servers are T5440's! It'll be very interesting to learn more when the announcement is made in October.

How UltraSPARC-T2/T2+ Beats Power6+ and Itanium

I came across this great blog entry from Sun on how the new 1.6Ghz UltraSPARC-T2/T2+ processor can outperform the Power6+ and Itanium processors. It's an excellent read and uses results from SPEC to demonstrate how CMT throughput matters more than clock speed or cache size.

I have used the SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks in the past to do comparisons of different servers. While it may not reflect well on "real world" workloads, it's a good base indicator. When one factors in the results from Oracle, SAP, SPECjbb, etc. a more realistic picture can be obtained. Of course the best way to understand how a server will behave with your application is actually run your application on it and simulate the workload. There are many commercial products out there, such as HP's Mercury tools that can automate such tests. In environments that I have worked in previously that have sensitive performance requirements, having such tools are invaluable for sizing and comparisons.

1.6Ghz T2/T2+ Systems Released

Today Sun has announced the availability of 1.6Ghz UltraSPARC-T2 and UltraSPARC-T2+ processors for the T-Series servers. As a result, the higher-end configurations that had the 1.4Ghz 8-core processors will now have the 1.6Ghz processors. The 1.2Ghz 8-core processor configurations will now have 1.4Ghz 8-core processors. And the 1.2Ghz 4-core processor configurations will remain on the low-end. Pricing wise, it looks like the 1.4Ghz 8-core processors are priced the way the 1.2Ghz 8-cores were priced. The 1.6Ghz 8-core processors seem to be priced at the old 1.4Ghz 8-core price point. So it's a nice speed increase for the product line. Here are some more enhancements:

• Solaris 10 5/09 OS Preloaded
• LDoms Manager and MIB 1.2 Pre-install
• ILOM 3.0
• CMT Tools 1.0 Pre-install
• GCC 4 for SPARC Systems 4.0.4 Pre-install
• Sun Studio 12 Pre-install
• SYS, FW, Download UTIL Pre-install
• MAI, 10 GBE ETCSYS CFG
• Live Upgrade, ABE Pre-install
• SATA DVD-RW Drives instead of PATA
• EOL of 1GB FB-DIMMs
• 4GB 800Mhz FB-DIMM Option for T5440 1.6Ghz Configurations
• New Disk Backplanes on certain models
• 32GB Solid State Disk Option
  
• New Perforated Chassis Covers

The great thing is that the T-Series servers are pre-loaded with the latest and greatest software and firmware, making them ready for LDoms. I'll assume that at some point the UltraSPARC-T1 systems will be EOL'd, to make room for the UltraSPARC-KT servers when they come out.



As customers leverage these servers for consolidation and virtualization, the need for good management tools will become extremely important. Luckily, while xVM OpsCenter is taking a long time to support LDoms, there is Wand from Ecoviv that can fill the gap with a centralized web management interface.


It's rather unfortunate that IBM's FUD machine continues to spread lies about CMT, but as they say the proof is in the pudding. With the 1.6Ghz announcement, there is also a new benchmark with the T5440 running the SAP SD benchmark where it beat competing Power6 and Itanium configurations on both price and performance. There are some other interesting customer wins that are mentioned with the benchmark above, located here. The T5440 also beat an HP DL580 G5 in the SPEC jAppServer2004 benchmark by 74%. Altogether, this demonstrates that CMT can compete in web, application, and database tiers.

Realistically, all the major ISV vendors have already moved to the multi-threaded model and developers can leverage SunStudio and JavaStudio to optimize their code. This will continue to become prevalent as even commodity processors for desktop, laptops, and even mobile devices continues to shift toward multi-core and multi-threaded processors. The clock speeds of processors can no longer be pushed without some significant manufacturing changes or everyone switching to liquid-cooling. And even then, the issue of large latencies for memory and I/O would become more obvious. With such constraints and the increasing emphasis on better power performance, CMT is still ahead of the pack.