Solaris 11: Hardware Compatibility List - 2019q1

Solaris 11: Hardware Compatibility List - 2019q1

Abstract

For those who are covering the life of real UNIX systems, a good place to track the progress of Solaris has been the Hardware Compatibility List. For the Q1 quarter of 2019, it may be helpful for readers to understand what the latest hardware is, that has been certified for Oracle Solaris, to execute 2019 purchases.

[Oracle Logo, courtesy Oracle Corporation]

Oracle's Submissions

Oracle's most recent submission - SPARC M8-8 on 2018-09-07 for Solaris 11.3 & 11.4.

Fujitsu's Submissions

Fujitsu's most recent submission - SPARC M-12 on 2017-07-10 for Solaris 11.3 & 11.4.

Interestingly enough, also certified is Solaris 10 1/13 [aka Solaris 10 Update 11]!

[Dell Logo, courtesy Dell Corporation]

Dell Additions

Dell continues to submit hardware into the Hardware Compatibility List.
They included 3x submissions:

1. 2018-11-14 PowerEdge R640 - 2x socket, 8x cores/socket, Intel Bronze 3106 CPU @ 1.70GHz
2. 2018-12-20 PowerEdge R840 - 4x socket, 4x cores/socket, Intel Gold 5122 CPU @ 3.60GHz
3. 2019-01-15 PowerEdge R740 - 2x socket, 14x cores/socket, Intel Gold 5120 CPU @ 2.20GHz

All of these were for Solaris 11.4.

The Odd Man Out

There is a Chinese outsourcing company which also appears on the HCL, called Inspur.
They have 2x submissions:

1. 2018-11-08 NF5280M5 - 2x socket 8x core/socket, Intel Silver 4110
2. 2018-11-15 NF5180M5 - 2x socket, 24x core/socket, Intel Platinum 8176

 Inspur was certifying for Solaris 11.4.

Itanium: Another Step Closer to Death

Itanium: Another Step Closer to Death
Abstract:
Intel had produced the Itanium architecture to compete in the higher-end 64 bit arena and eventually sun-set their aging 32 bit x64 architecture. With the release of AMD's x64 architecture, and vendors such as Sun Microsystems abandoning the Itanium roadmap for AMD x64 - pressure was placed upon Intel to include 64 bit instructions in the x86 chipset. Now with Intel x86 supporting 64 bit processing, there is little reason for Itanium to exist, placing pressure on remaining Itanum system vendors.

[Artist depiction of the Sinking of the Titanic]

Intel Itanium: The Sinking Chip
In 1999, Sun started a port of Solaris to Itanium, but it was Solaris support for Itanium was abandoned 2000, was considered again in 2004, but abandoned. Itanium servers were dropped by IBM in 2005. Dell kills Itanium servers in 2005. CentOS drops Itanium support in 2007.  In 2009, NetMgt reported that Red Hat killed support for Intel Itanium. in 2010, Microsoft Network Management reported Microsoft killed support for Intel Itanium. Gelato ends Linux on Itanium in academic HPC environments. Oracle dropped future Intel Itanium development in March 2011, but HP sued. Network management published in March 2012 that it became clear in court proceedings that Oracle was right, Intel Itanium is dead, but Oracle had to provide software support, anyway.

HP Wins & Loses:
After winning a lawsuit against Oracle, Intel announces plans to slow Itanium development. Itanium will not receive the newer socket update, to capture newer hardware features, but will merely receive an in-socket speed-bumb.

PC World has just noticed an Intel posting from late January, saying that Kittson would remain socket-compatible with the current Itanium 9300 and 9500 CPUs. Sticking a new processor in an older motherboard can still yield speed improvements, but you'll miss out on new, chipset-dependent advancements—support for faster RAM, newer RAM standards (like the upcoming DDR4), and new versions of PCI Express, SATA, and USB, among other thngs.

Clearl, HP is in a world-of-hurt. New Itanium servers are not coming.

[Itanium & Inspur image, courtesy The Register]

Itanium: Moving to China?
In April 2011, Chinese announce plans to build servers on Itanium. Huawei and Inspur announce plans to build Itanium servers. What OS will those servers run - is HP it the only owner of an OS on Itanium? One can't imagine that HP will share it's OS with a hardware competitor, unless they plan on abandoning the hardware market for Itanium, and charging them an OS fee. Will HP become an OS vendor? Perhaps HP will sell OpenVMS through them?

Conclusions:
It may have been better for HP to purchase Sun SPARC & Solaris, to migrate their Itanium systems over to SPARC, instead of letting Oracle get the entire company. HP clearly needed something to save itself from the sinking of Intel Itanium, Oracle knew it, and it looks both Oracle & HP were pretty close to a deal that would have saved HP customers from a lot of hurt.