Network Management: SPARC T4: Launched 2011-09-26

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

SPARC T4: Launched 2011-09-26

[Oracle SPARC T4 Processor]

SPARC T4: Launched 2011-09-26

Product Launch

The Register covered the T4 product launch in an article as well as the Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster in an additional article. The writer was kind enough to include images of the new systems being released based upon the new SPARC T4 silicon.

A simple PDF data sheet on the new Oracle SPARC T4 processor is available on Oracle's web site. On Monday, September 26, 2010 - a presentation and product launch was conducted. The Event Replay is available on-line, but some of the highlights are as follows.

SPARC T4 Announcement

Some features outlined included:

high throughput: 8 cores, 8 threads per core
high thread performance: clock rate: 2.85GHz and 3.00 GHz.
high-thread performance: single thread can use whole core
high thread performance: Out of Order execution
4x on-chip DDR3 Memory Controller Channels
2x on-chip 10GigE networking
2x on-chip x8 PCIe 2nd generation I/O interfaces
18 on-chip crypto engines

Price/Performance Comparison

Some price/performance comparisons were made between a T4-4 cluster and IBM POWER 7 system.

2010 Roadmap Reminder

The market was reminded of the 2010 SPARC processor road map and how other vendors refused to release a public road map.

IBM recently released a historical road map with no dates for POWER, but it seem they might be behind.