A) Software development
Oracle has been hard at work upgrading the SPARC servers since its Sun acquisition in 2010. This week’s announcement proclaims the project is finally complete. The SPARC systems have been refreshed with T5 and M5 processors, the T5 boasting as the fastest microprocessor available. John Fowler, Oracle’s VP of Systems said that the new SPARC T5 and M5 servers “leapfrog the competition with up to 10x the performance of the previous generation, offering an unbeatable value for midrange and high-end enterprise computing.”
The new SPARC T5 and M5 servers, running Oracle Solaris, offer more scalability than the existing T4 line, they’re also said to be twice as fast as their T4 predecessors. The new servers range from the T5-1B single socket blade to the M5-32 which features 32 sockets and are available in single, 3U, 5U, 8U and full rack mounts. The new server lineup includes a total of five new servers optimized for consolidation and virtualization. According to Oracle, the T5 servers have set 17 world records in enterprise computing, beating out IBM’s Power 780 server lineup.
However Oracle isn’t stopping here. According to ZDNet, Oracle is planning on shifting gears towards silicon and hardware capable of running its database queries and software. “Software in silicon is redefining enterprise computing”, Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO told ZDNet adding “modern hardware is 90% software.”
Kasia Lorenc
Kasia Lorenc is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. Combining her love of IT and marketing, she currently serves as the Director of Technology and Search Marketing for Zacuto USA in Chicago.
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B) Hardware development
On Tuesday IBM launched a new zEnterprise mainframe, the zBC12. With a starting price of $75,000 USD, it's designed for the latest in analytics, cloud, and mobile computing, and boasts a faster processor at 4.2 GHz (up to 13, depending on the model) and two times the available memory -- up to 496 GB -- than its predecessor, the Z114. The company said it also added new industry solutions and enhanced software and operating systems across its entire zEnterprise portfolio.
"Each core on the zBC12 microprocessor chip has dedicated data compression and cryptographic processors -- an improvement over the previous generation where two cores shared those processors," the company states on the zBC12's data sheet (pdf). "The chip has [also] been optimized for software performance. With a redesign of cache, there are almost 2X the amount of cache on the chip and 2X the amount in the processor drawer than the prior generation. With a larger cache structure, there is less of a need to access main memory which helps improve the performance of data serving."
IBM is now offering the zBC12 in two models: a single central processing drawer model, the H06, and a two-drawer model, the H13, the latter of which offers the additional flexibility for I/O and coupling expansion and increased specialty engine capability. IBM said the H06 and H13 models are designed with up to 6 and 13 configurable cores respectively which can be configured as general purpose processors (CP) or specialty engines (IFL, zAAP, ICF or SAPs).
The company said on Tuesday that it's also launching a Linux-based version of the zBC12, the Enterprise Linux Server (ELS). This solution includes hardware, a z/VM Hypervisor and three years of maintenance, and can run a portfolio of over 3,000 Linux applications. The ELS can be extended with two new solutions, ELS for Analytics and Cloud-Ready for Linux on System z, as an onramp for analytics and cloud computing, the company said.
IBM has also released v6.3 of the z/VM operating system which now supports up to 1 TB of real memory, leverages HiperDispatch technology for improved system performance, and is enabled for OpenStack for advanced enterprise-wide service management. The x/OS operating system has also been updated, now v2.1, with many performance and scalability enhancements for data serving workloads. It also now includes "Crypto as a Service" which enables Linux on System z applications to use z/OS services to encrypt data.
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