Wonderbra-whats up with your rant on SPARC?

Its clear you are an IBM gnome. Why would you say that Oracle will pull the plug on SPARC anytime soon?

Since Oracle published the *public* SPARC roadmap, now 2 years ago, they have delivered on every milestone and even Larry, yesterday, stated that the future of Oracle is with SPARC. Future SPARC CPUs will integrate Oracle SW components, which is where Larry believes he can innovate and differentiate.

With over a 1,000 engineers, http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/innovation/innovator-hetherington-191304.html, Oracle has even pulled in several developments like the SPARC T5, now expected end of this year and the performance gains on SPARC T4 60% greater than what they promised, beating Power7 and Westmere-EX on many relevant benchmarks.

Its clear that Oracle is having difficulty increasing server revenue, especially when a new SPARC T4 system is a fraction of the cost of the older M-Series systems, competing against Xeon on price, while they are less than half to a third the cost of an equivalent IBM Power system but I think with the SPARC T4 systems ramping in volume, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oracles-sparc-t4-servers-in-high-demand-in-the-communications-industry-2012-01-31, and SPARC SuperCluster showing massive ramp up as well (Oracle announced a 139% revenue increase in engineered systems yesterday), the revenues will be returning very soon. As Mark Hurd and Larry Ellison said on yesterdays great Q3FY12 performance, Q4 and FY13 will be the year of Oracles Systems.

@ Wunderbar1

"Spoken like a true Oracle employee (Oracler?). While I don't think there is any disagreement about HP being the grand master of dropping platforms and Itanium's future, Oracle is about offering choice?"

Well, if you look at each layer of the Oracle stack, yes, theres choice. Oracle offers several DB's, several virtualization technologies, OSes (Oracle Linux, Solaris), choice of CPU architectures (x86/SPARC), Storage, etc and many of these are open standards.

"In what world is Power/AIX more of a lock in than Oracle's new engineered systems (Exa-xxx)? Power/AIX is a Unix platform."

If you choose AIX, you are locked to Power, if you choose Power, you are locked to AIX. Either way, you are locked to IBM as you can't run AIX on other vendors hardware and no one but IBM sells Power servers. With Oracle Linux and Solaris, you can choose HP, IBM, Dell hardware. With SPARC, which is an IEEE open standard, you can choose Oracle or Fujitsu. Exadata runs standard x86 best of breed servers. Nothing proprietary here.

Choosing Exa-xx means that you've already chosen/are running Oracle DB 11G and/or Weblogic and you want to run your datawarehouse/ OLTP or middleware as fast as possible. Exa-xxx runs either Oracle Linux or Solaris. Wheres the lock-in? Its an appliance. You buy it to run what you already have faster. If you buy Exadata today, you can always move your data to a new system in the future which can be on another vendors hardware-since both supported OSes run on 3rd party HW. There is no Exa proprietary format. its Oracle DB running on clustered x86 systems.

"You can run basically any DB, with the exception of MS SQL (because MS doesn't support Power or anything other than x86, IBM would welcome them), any application server and any application set in the world. Oracle Exa-xxx is Oracle or Oracle software. No other ISVs need apply. "

The whole idea of Oracle on Oracle is optimization, integration and reduced risk and costs for the millions of customers running Oracle SW. Why complicate your datacenter mixing hundreds of vendors across the stack? Oracle SW is #1 across a wide range of its SW offerings and now Oracle is selling HW to run its SW fastest.

Which other ISVs need apply? SAP is certified on Exadata, as is the Oracle SW stack its optimized for?

"Exa-xxx is the most proprietary, locked-in system on the planet. "

Spoken like a true IBM-er. Oracle doesn’t force customers to choose Exa-xx for running Oracle DB. You can choose one of Oracles x86-series or SPARC series servers or dare I say, run IBM Power servers. Customers know up front if Exa-xxx will work for them or not and clearly a 1,000 plus customers can't be wrong. http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/422468

"What other hardware system offers you zero other ISV choices for any portion of the system?"

What other ISV choices are necessary? Exadata is an Oracle DB datawarehouse/OLTP engineered system. Its designed to run Oracle DB. You won't buy Exadata to run DB2 or Sybase will you? If you need to run other ISV software, you can now choose SPARC SuperCluster or Oracles standard x86 or SPARC servers. The support over 11,000 different applications from over 400 different ISV's. Need more choice? Its not possible on IBM nor HP.

"As compared to Oracle Exa-xxx, IBM mainframe is a wide open system" Yeah and Ive seen pigs fly.

"Oracle's marketing says they are about creating open systems (OpenWorld, after all), but that is misleading. They mean they are using Oracle proprietary instantiations of open technologies, Java primarily. I was at an Oracle Fusion conference and the Oracle VP was going on about Fusion being open, offering choice, best of breed, etc, etc. I asked the question: Being that Oracle is committed to open standards and choice, I assume you will offer Fusion ERP customers the choice of running WebSphere as the application server as it is J2EE using Oracle's JDK... how about DB2 as it is based on SQL and uses Oracle's PL/SQL procedural scripting.... They are going to get back to me on that question. No other ERP provider in the world offers customers zero choices from ERP to application server to DB, coming soon to platform. Compare Oracle ERP's openness and choice with SAP."

Oracle claiming its an open systems vendor is no mor misleading than HP or IBM claiming the same.

"While services is an important part of IBM's business, saying that services = 57% and Power = 3% is misleading (if 3% is correct, it seems low)."

Services is not just an "important" part of IBM's business, it’s the key focus for the company and everything else IBM does is to help drive more services. Otherwise it would be selling direct, fully comparable systems to Oracles Engineered systems. Problem for IBM, is that they won't be able to sell any services as its not needed with Oracle Engineered systems.

The %'s are taken directly from IBM's quarterly financial statement located here: http://www.ibm.com/investor/3q11/presentation/3q11.pdf

RE: Bootnote @ Allison Park

Spoken like a true IBMer. I'm sorry but Oracle is mean? HP is bitter? If anything HP's customers should be bitter! Do you recall TRU64, Alpha, PA-RISC? HP clearly knows about canceling architectures and forcing customers to migrate to new architectures. They’ve been doing it for over 10 years! Why do you think HP bought EDS? Because they realized that the big money is in selling services for migrations and they didn’t want all the migration revenue to go to IBM's IGS. 57% of IBM's revenue comes from selling services while less than 3% comes from selling Power servers. IBM's HW is just a trojan horse to sell and drive more services revenue.

So, the writing has been on the wall for several years with Itaniums demise. 20+ HW vendors dropped developing Itanium systems, Redhat and Microsoft dropped OS support, and even HP dropped Linux support on Itanium so Oracle now dropping SW development is just the latest in long line of abandoning the sinking Itanic before it drowns. Now regarding Oracle, theres no proof whatsoever that Oracle is mean. After all, Oracle wants to continue being #1 with its key SW and it now has the HW vehicle to deliver its SW on a more cost competitive platform whether its x86 or SPARC and whether its Linux or Solaris. So while IBM wants to lock in those HP customers with AIX/Power, and HP is now trying to migrate Itanium customers to Linux on x86 with its Odyssey project, Oracle is offering choice. So all this bull about Oracle being mean is just pure FUD. And Hurd has realized that Oracle is where its at.

Does anyone really believe Intel will deliver Poulson in 2012?

Admit it folks. Intel serves incredible coolaid. Yum Yum. The slides look great. The technology appears awesome and it finally sounds like Itanium is going to catch up. But wait a second! Lets put on our reality caps here folks. When has Intel delivered Itanium on time and as planned? Show me a single Itanium CPU that has come out in the expected time frame with the expected technologies!? Every single Itanium, from Merced to latest Tukwila has slipped by atleast 2 years (Tukwila slipped 5 years if you look at here http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/ news/483/1038483/intel-tukwila- suffers-from-political-squabbling) and you believe Poulson, with a major technology shift, core changes, etc will be delivered next year in 2012? Has Tukwila really started shipping across the HP Integrity product line yet? Last time I checked, even Superdome2-32 still isnt out beyond science projects installations and Superdome2-64 is MIA. In a years time, Xeon will be at 12 to 16-cores, with 3-5x more performance, running leading OSes like Linux, Solaris, etc and with Itanium now stuck in the HP-UX rut (Linux and Windows has been abandoned), who the hell is going to invest in this architecture besides those with handcuffs to HP? I can't see how Intel continues investing in this science project, especially when its HP making any of the revenue on systems. As an Intel shareholder, I am definitely disappointed in Intel throwing away money on Itanium. Its time to just bury the thing.

Giving credit to Oracle (for its SPARC roadmap) where credit is due

Once again, I am quite disappointed in TPM's arguments, analysis and misguidance regarding Oracles SPARC roadmap. First of all, Mr TPM, why aren't you just admitting that Oracles new SPARC roadmap is quite a milestone in the history of CPU and systems development being made by Oracle? Oracles reputation, and of course LJE's reputation, making this public disclosure on future product plans is quite aggressive to say the least. Customers can now use this roadmap for planning purposes and clearly hold this against Oracle should they not deliver to plan. There is an incredible amount of detail in the roadmap including performance gain expectations that neither Intel, IBM or even AMD have ever disclosed PUBLICLY. You can look at IBM's latest Power roadmap which is all about history. There no details about futures of Power beyond a Power8 placeholder. Same for Intel with Itanium. Sure, all CPU vendors have slipped on delivery dates and even made changes to CPU plans, but they never disclosed the details to hold it against them- so would you think that Oracle can afford to publish such amount of details without a certain level of certainty? So hold onto Oracles SPARC roadmap and over time, compare to whats released and then, comment on whether they’ve delivered to plan or not. So far, it looks like Oracle has delivered two milestones already on the roadmap (SPARC T3 and SPARC64VII+), on time and at performance specified. I for one, am looking forward to seeing the SPARC advancements, which look to be very competitive and take Oracle to new heights.

IBM finally catches up with Power7

Allison,

Glad IBM's Power7 announcement brought you excitement. Its clear that you enjoy making statements that have absolutely no substantiations-its what we call FUD.

Sun and Oracle have been shipping its third generation UltraSPARCT2+ servers for over two years now, so comparisons against it is a bit behind the times. So its great news to finally see IBM catching up in the world of multi-core processors! Having been dual-core for almost a decade, IBM has finally been proven wrong and now agrees with what Sun has been telling the world since 2005! Multi-thread, multi-core is the only way to address todays datacenter challenges. But to really address these challenges, its going to need more than a great CPU and that’s where IBM falls flat. AIX still hasn't been proven to scale beyond 128-threads (yesterdays Power 595 or todays Power 750) with no real world commercial workload benchmarks to prove it can scale. Sure, IBM will lead you to believe this with all the 4 x socket CPU only benchmarks you want, but where are the 8 x socket benchmarks besides the IBM typical SPECCPU results? which hide any I/O or OS challenges they surely have.

Where are the 8 x socket Java, SAP, TPC-C or even better, TPC-H benchmarks to prove all this might??

Where are the Oracle based benchmarks? Do realize that Oracle is #1 in OLTP, Data Warehousing, Middleware, Customer Relationship Management , Human Capital Management, Enterprise Performance Management. Without Oracle based benchmarks, IBM is pigeonholing Power7 into a niche market.

Yeah, IBM will iron out the AIX scaling kinks-eventually. Sun had the same challenges with Solaris back in 2005 and has had 5+ years to optimize and tune to this new world of massive multi-threading, now proven to run up to 512 threads in a single OS image today. But by the time AIX catches up, Oracle will be delivering UltraSPARCT3 and the follow-ons that will again leapfrog IBM's Power CPUs, and will also get squeezed from the other end with Oracle/Fujitsu delivering the follow-ons to SPARCVII+, which by the way, are being developed and has been committed to publicly. You can see the roadmaps clearly identified on slides 16 & 17 in following public presentation.

http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/@ocom/documents/webcontent/044518.pdf

So while Power7 may be a great CPU, and has finally caught up, its going to be dragged through the mud by AIX and scalability challenges. And oh, have you seen the actual pricing for Power7? WOW-It sure won't compete against Sun CMT-especially at 4x the pricing for same # of sockets/cores!

Monty is using this venue to self serve his own interests! Greedy Bastard!

By signing Monty's petition, you are in fact helping build Montys marketing muscle to sell his latest companies product, Maria DB and further advertise MySQL. This is incredibly powerful advertising that is priceless and virtually free. Monty and the MySQL investors has already made ~$1B and its clear that Monty is investing in his latest venture. Monty's efforts are selfish, self fulfilling and these efforts don't help anyone but him.

http://news.cnet.com/openroad/?keyword=Monty+Widenius

http://pooteeweet.org/blog/1639

Oracle Sun Exadata Version 2 confirms Oracle is also betting on Sun x86

This latest Oracle/Sun announcement on Sun Exadata Version 2 now confirms that Oracle is also committed to Sun's x86 servers and storage!

Your comment that SPARC is MIA is clearly being spewed by your employer, IBM. Oracle has already confirmed several times that they will be investing heavily in SPARC.

Are the following not enough to confirm this?

Sun SPARC + Oracle is faster than IBM on TPC-C

http://www.oracle.com/features/sunoraclefaster.html

"Where in it to Win", "Spend more money developing SPARC than Sun does now"

http://www.oracle.com/features/suncustomers.html

"Are you going to discontinue the SPARC chip?" No. Once we own Sun we're going to increase the investment in SPARC. We think designing our own chips is very, very important"-Larry Ellison

http://www.oracle.com/sun/lje-oracle-sun-faq.pdf

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0740285120090507?rpc=44

"Oracle plans to grow the Sun hardware business after the closing, protecting Sun customers' investments and ensuring the long-term viability of Sun products"

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312509103352/dex991.htm

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/709519/000119312509085803/ddefa14a.htm

TPM-Have an axe to grind with Sun?

Who the hell is 3leaf and why are you comparing them to Sun's T5440? If you had any backbone, you would have pointed out that the latest Sun T5440 absolutely blows away a majority of IBM's Power6 product line- and thats actually a headline grabber for your readers to click on.

Looking at the http://www.spec.org/jbb2005/results/jbb2005.html website, you will easily see that the T5440 4 x socket 1.6GHz server trounces anything that IBM can deliver up to an including the 8 x socket 4.7GHz Power 570.

Yes, thats right, a measly 1.6GHz UltraSPARC T2 Plus CPU is more than 2x faster than the Power6 which has almost 3x greater frequency. You can also point out that the T5440 results actually clobbered the Power 560, Power 550 and Power 520 systems.

Server Chips Cores Ghz Processor bops

---------------------- ----- -------- ------- --------------- -----------

IBM - Power 570 8 16 5.00 POWER6 867,989

Sun - T5440 4 32 1.60 UST2 Plus 841,380

IBM - Power 570 8 16 4.70 POWER6 798,752

Sun - T5440 4 32 1.40 US T2 Plus 692,736

IBM - Power 560 8 16 3.60 POWER6 593,904

IBM - Power 570 4 8 4.70 POWER6 402,923

IBM - Power 550 4 8 4.20 POWER6 350,642

As for T5440 pricing, its all available here: http://www.sun.com/T5440 and click on "Get It" for pricing of all configurations. The highest end config (4 x socket 1.6GHz) lists for $115,695 which is basically the system used for the Specjbb benchmark.

IBM pricing can be found here: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/550/browse_aix.html

A 4 x socket 5GHz P6+ Power 550 lists for $115,204-roughly the same price as the T5440, however the T5440 trounces this system with over 2x the performance.

The 8 x socket Power 560 3.6GHz P6 lists for $139,751 located here: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/560/browse_aix.html

Again, The T5440 outperforms this system by a wide margin and its atleast 20% less expensive.

So unless you are getting paid by IBM, you'd gain a little more respect comparing like for like (Sun vs IBM) systems instead of comparing apples to watermelons (Sun vs 3Leaf)