Sparc Chip M7 by Oracle to supercharge calculation into memory

Oracle has given the first look at his next Sparc processor M7, promising large earnings performance for customers using the memory when calculating characteristics of its database of 12 c.

The Sparc M7 is due for release next year and will eventually be used in both high-and low-end Unix Oracle systems, including the M-series and T-series products, said John Fowler, executive vice President for business of Oracle systems.

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The chip has 32 CPU cores-by core on M6-12 and is to be manufactured on a more advanced process, 20 nanometers, allowing a faster, smaller transistors. It also relies on a new core design called S4.

The M7 will provide a performance boost to three-four times for applications across the Board, according to Fowler. But more significant for some customers, the chip has incorporated make accelerators much bigger earnings for a handful of key tasks, he said.

One of these is in memory processing, where the data is fetched from main memory instead of disk to reduce query times. Is one of the great points of Oracle's latest database 12 c-CEO Larry Ellison said it will be Crunch data to "speed the ungodly."

M7 chip designers worked with the team of Oracle database to build functions directly in Silicon to accelerate operations in memory. Fowler did not give the exact numbers, but said it will be made "whole multiples" for joint operations, means at least double or triple the performance on Sparc M6.

"Certain queries will be wildly accelerated," he said.

The chip is also hard-wired to handle "live decompression," which would let customers keep more of their data in a compressed format and not pay a performance penalty when it is sent for processing. That in turn could reduce storage costs.

Another function is embedded in Silicon reduces the latency of messages between servers, which reduces the performance overhead for the database cluster.

"If you want to band together two systems, four, eight systems, the lower the latency, the more it improves scalability, why don't you wait for the memory interface," said Fowler.

Yet another feature checks data in memory for errors resulting from a bug or exploit security software. Called "real time data integrity application", used only for debugging and other non-production uses, but the Sparc M7 runs quickly enough for use with live.

Oracle engineers has provided an overview of the chip in a presentation Tuesday to Hot Chips Conference in Cupertino, California. Is the fifth new processor by Oracle after the acquisition of Sun Microsystems four years ago. Some expected to sell off Ellison the side of Sun's hardware business, but instead focused on building expensive systems, high-performance integrating closely Oracle hardware and software.

The acceleration tweaks, including the features in memory and decompression will be "transparent" for users of Oracle database 12 c, said Fowler. However, they are not "only or private" to the Oracle database, he said.

This means that other developers can program applications to take advantage of them. Oracle expects a lot of developers to use data integrity applications, for example. Relief features in memory and data require more skill to take advantage, but a company like IBM, for example, could in theory improve its database to take advantage of these features, if you wanted to, said Fowler.

Oracle is not giving details yet of the Sparc systems M7 will go, but Fowler said the chip can scale up to 32 outlets, such as the current Sparc M6. He also said the same chip will be used in both T and M series.

James Niccolai covers data centers and technology news for IDG News Service. Follow James on Twitter at @jniccolai. E-mail address of James is james_niccolai@idg.com

Fix:This story as originally posted misstated the number of core chips M6 quote. The article has been changed.

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