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'SPARC servers have come a long way in 25 years'

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Chokkapan
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BANGALORE, INDIA: It has been 25 years since the first SPARC (Scalable Processor ARChitecture) -based computer, Sun-4, was introduced. Over the two-and-a-half decades, it has come a long way, says Mitesh Agarwal, chief technical officer and director, System Solution Consulting, Oracle.

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"It has transformed over the years and has gone through multiple generations. Back then, all market players were doing single core and about seven years ago, the next-generation wave began," he summarizes, adding that though many processors could compute swiftly, the other components weren't as quick or agile.

For instance, memory was just one-third of the processor's capacity and most of the processors today waste most of the time waiting, thereby losing efficiency," he explains, in an exclusive interaction with CIOL.

In 1987, Sun-4 was launched by Sun Microsystems to develop its own microprocessor, which led to SPARC being an integral part of enterprise IT. In 1992, Sun launched its first high-end SPARC server, SPARCcenter 2000.

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Today, the SPARC processor family is used in Oracle's enterprise servers to create architectures that are optimized for a mix of application types, from CRM systems and Java/Web middleware infrastructure applications to mission-critical ERP and backend OLTP/data warehousing enterprise applications that depend on high availability and scalability.

Agarwal says that their first T Series processors launched in 2005 are currently in their fifth generation. The latest, T4, he points out, is one of their fastest growing processor segments.

"Our focus in on how to ensure faster processing capacity while handling multiple workload. Basically, customers look for scalability & stability, and performace. So, it depends on whether the processor performs linearly (2X with 2 CPUs, 4X with 4 CPUs, and so on) and SPARC has the history of scaling linearly. Performance-wise, we have set 400 world records across a variety of workloads."

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To learn more about SPARC's journey, click here.

As for security, Agarwal says that the SPARC T4 processor includes unique integrated on-chip cryptographic support that provides wire-speed encryption capabilities for secure data center operation. "Today, if you look at any security framework, all the encryption ciphers are built in and nobody has to worry about any threats and pay extra for the secure services."

SPARC servers with Oracle Solaris, according to him, also offer tight integration of key features and functionality around virtualization, networking performance, and systems management at no additional cost. Dynamic Domains, Oracle Zones, and Oracle VM Server for SPARC are included and offer real-time scaling and optimal resource utilization to ensure the maximum performance and scalability of all application deployments.

"We offer specialized services on virtualization at zero cost, so even if one part of the server fails, other hardware and software partitions will continue to run. Each chip of T4 has eight cores, with eight threads each, adding up to 64 threads; each thread is like a CPU, in a way. On top of it, you can group four chips together," expounds Agarwal.

In addition, Oracle's SPARC M-Series Enterprise servers offer dynamic reconfiguration, sophisticated resource control, and scale up to 64 processors in an open-systems compute platform that is highly reliable, easy to manage, and vertically-scalable to deliver a mainframe-class system architecture at open systems prices, he concludes.

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