Coming Soon: SPARC T8-2 Refresh

 

Coming Soon: Oracle SPARC T8-2 Refresh

Abstract:

In September 2017, Oracle released their flagship M8 RISC CPU, with T8 platforms based upon it! The S5 Core was an amazing accomplishment, 4 instructions per clock cycle, screaming at 5 GHz. Fujitsu simultaneously released their SPARC64 XII CPU, with SPARC M12 Platforms. Solaris 11.3 was supposed to become Solaris 12, but instead was branded as Solaris 11.4 to encourage continuity. The M8+ processors listed on the now unpublished SPARC/Solaris Roadmap, were supposed to be released in 2020. Fujitsu released a roadmap of a SPARC memory increase of 1.5% in 2021, and Fujitsu came out with new memory risers to expand memory by 150%. Oracle refreshed T8 platform components after 5 years on 2022/2023: 100 GbE NIC Cards, 32 GB FibreChannel Cards, 128 GB DIMMS (4 TB T8-2 Chassis Capacity), better Live Upgrade, Live Firmware Updates. There is a T8-2 CPU Card update coming soon... but will they hold the 2020/2021 predicted M8+ from the erased server roadmap?

New T8 Platform Coming

With the T8 platforms being released in September 2017, it appears that they may be coming of age, as the 5 year tax cycle may be ready to expire. September 2023 marked 6 years, and this is when we have been becoming aware of hardware refresh for the T8 models on the horizon.

For the trade rags not been doing their jobs, dead platforms don't roll firmware with new features. 

Nov 2023 - Firmware 9.10.7

New hardware designs are finally being released, which are incompatible with existing hardware.

• Add support for new CPU mezzanine (CM) design (34640013, 34640060).
• 35837133 Abort boot if incorrect FPGA is installed on Infineon T8 CM
• 35810699 Prevent downgrades to incompatible FW if an Infineon T8 CM is installed
• 34640060 Hostconfig support for Infineon VRD for VCORE power rails on T8 CM
• 34640013 Add support for Infineon XDPE15284D controller for VCORE power rails on T8 CM

May 2023 - Firmware 9.10.6

Feature Request for T8-2 Motherboard w/o onboard NIC and Memory Risers /w TI TPS546D24A

• 34575814 Support T8-2 motherboard without onboard NIC
• 34575730 Support T8-2 motherboard without onboard NIC
• 34575699 Support T8-2 motherboard without onboard NIC
• 34575617 Add vrdtool_ti support for TI TPS546D24A
• 34510413 Hostconfig support for TI TPS546D24A on T8-2 YMR
• 34500685 Add support for TI TPS546D24A for VMEMA/VMEMB power rails on T8-2 YMR

Conclusions

Oracle has promised to support SPARC Solaris to a MINIMUM of 2034. Looking forward 11 years is a very long time away, in compute time. The M8 Processor is now 6+ years old, but the market is still playing catch up. The SPARC M8's 5 GHz clock rate with 4 instructions per clock cycle across 32 cores with additional Crypto & DB acceleration units in the same silicon is still unmatched for workloads, specially encrypted. With the previous 128 GB DIMM & 100 GbE upgrades achieved, we are looking forward to seeing what the new T8-2 CPU boards will look like... if not announced in January 2024, they may be announced in September of 2024. Will these hold the SPARC M8+ sockets? One could hope, since the market has taken 6+ years to nearly catch up.