Engineered System for
General-Purpose Computing
SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 delivers extreme performance
and value.
The engineered system model that made Oracle Exadata Database Machine and
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud the fastest
dedicated-purpose systems has come to
general-purpose computing with the release
of Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster T4-4.
Introduced by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison
and Oracle Executive Vice President John
Fowler on September 26, 2011, at a live
launch event, SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 is
based on the new SPARC T4 processor that
has already achieved nine world-record
benchmarks across a wide range of workloads. SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 runs on
both Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle Solaris 10
and offers complete forward and backward
application compatibility for the thousands
of customers running applications on Oracle
Solaris today. “We wanted to give [cus-tomers] a very smooth upgrade path, and
that’s what the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 is,”
Ellison said at the event.
T4 AT THE CORE
The brain of the new SPARC SuperCluster
T4-4 is the new SPARC T4 processor, which
is up to five times faster for single-threaded
workloads than the SPARC T3 processor that
it replaces, Ellison said. Fowler concurred,
noting that the SPARC T4 family is “the
biggest single-generation performance
boost in SPARC history.”
The SPARC T4 processor integrates out-
of-order execution and dynamic threading
to provide optimal performance regardless
of an application’s execution profile. The
SPARC T4’s integrated cryptographic stream
processing unit supports 16 industry-
standard security ciphers without intro-
ducing processing overhead. The SPARC T4
processor also exploits the virtualization
capabilities of Oracle Solaris Zones and
Oracle VM Server for SPARC,
enabling customers to
improve system utilization
while reducing space and
power requirements.
ENGINEERED FOR
PERFORMANCE
SPARC SuperCluster T4-4
can come equipped with
either two or four SPARC
T4-4 servers to provide up
to 16 eight-core processors
and 4 terabytes of memory in a single rack.
It includes redundant InfiniBand-attached
ZFS storage clusters for high-performance
network-attached storage, and Oracle
Exadata Storage Servers for unmatched
Oracle Database 11 g performance.
Because SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 inte-
grates both hardware and software from
Oracle, its strengths are magnified, Fowler
said. “Many different companies could,
potentially, put different racks of hardware
together,” he said. “But what binds this
together is the software.”
SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 has been opti-
mized for running Oracle Solaris 11, Oracle
VM Server for SPARC, Oracle Exalogic Elastic
Cloud software, and Oracle Database 11 g.
The entire system is managed using Oracle
Enterprise Manager and Oracle Enterprise
Manager Ops Center, which is now bundled
with Oracle Premier Support.
The net result of Oracle’s applications-to-disk engineering is a system built and
tuned for performance. “You cannot make
a strong package out of a collection of
weaker components,” Fowler said. “Here at
Oracle we’ve been investing in SPARC and
investing in Oracle Solaris to create these
leadership technologies.”
IDEAL CONSOLIDATION PLATFORM Because of the extreme perfor- mance and powerful virtualization built into SPARC SuperCluster T4-4, organizations can consolidate many existing applications onto one system while enjoying improved performance. Organizations can attach additional Exadata Storage Expansion Racks or their existing storage area network using an optional Fibre Channel adapter. And if even greater computing power
is needed, up to eight SPARC SuperCluster
T4-4 systems or Exadata Storage Expansion
Racks can be interconnected.
“Oracle is changing the dynamics of the
data center by combining the industry’s
best technology—the SPARC T4 processor,
Oracle Solaris 11, Oracle Exadata storage, and
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud—into a versatile, secure, general-purpose engineered
system,” Fowler said. “Oracle’s SPARC
SuperCluster T4-4 is an ideal platform for
application and server consolidation that
demonstrates how engineered systems can
deliver huge performance at a fraction of the
cost of competing solutions.” T
Fred Sandsmark is a regular contributor to
Oracle Magazine.
NEXT STEPS
LEARN more about
SPARC SuperCluster T4-4
bit.ly/omagspacsc
the SPARC T4 processor
bit.ly/omagsparct4
WATCH a 3-D demo
bit.ly/omagscdemo
SEE SPARC T-Series server benchmarks
bit.ly/omagt4bench
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
