SPARC Enterprise
Encyclopedia
The SPARC Enterprise series is a range of UNIX
server computers co-developed by Sun Microsystems
and Fujitsu
introduced in 2007. They are marketed and sold by Sun Microsystems (since 2010, Oracle Corporation
), Fujitsu, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers
under the common brand of SPARC Enterprise, superseding Sun's Sun Fire
and Fujitsu's PRIMEPOWER server product lines.
or SPARC64 VII processor based servers are designated "M-class". The "M" indicates mainframe class features.
In 2008, Fujitsu released the SPARC64 VII, a quad-core processor, with each core featuring two-way simultaneous multi-threading. Existing M-class servers will be able to upgrade to the SPARC64 VII processors in the field. A SPARC64 VII processor module includes four physical cores, where each core can execute two threads. Each physical core is able to run both threads simultaneously. With SMT
, there is no context-switch time and the two threads share the instruction pipeline smoothly. When both are ready to run, they alternate cycles for superscalar
instruction issue, and share the functional units according to need.
An important capability of the M-Series is the ability to mix processor generations and clock speeds in the same system and domain. All M-Series servers can have both SPARC64 VI and SPARC64 VII CPUs installed and they will run at their native speeds, with no clocking down to the slowest CPU.
benchmark, making it the fastest
single system supercomputer at that time.
On May 2, 2008, Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server achieved a world performance record on the TPC-H data warehousing benchmark at the 1 Terabyte scale factor using the Oracle Database
.
As of February 19, 2009, the SPARC Enterprise M8000 holds the 64-thread world performance records on the SPEC
OMP2001 benchmark, both for medium
and for large
-based Sun Fire
T1000 and T2000 are branded to the SPARC Enterprise line:
-based servers to the SPARC Enterprise line:
In October 2008, Sun released the 4-way SMP UltraSPARC T2 Plus-based server:
According to the official Oracle roadmap, in 2013 there will be 8-socket T3 servers.
The UltraSPARC T1, UltraSPARC T2/T2+, and SPARC T3 models partition the system using Logical Domains
.
Both M-class and UltraSPARC T1 models support Solaris Containers
, which supports a maximum of 8191 non-global zones in each Dynamic Domain or Logical Domain.
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
server computers co-developed by Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
and Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
introduced in 2007. They are marketed and sold by Sun Microsystems (since 2010, Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
), Fujitsu, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers
Fujitsu Siemens Computers
Fujitsu Siemens Computers B.V. was a Japanese and German IT vendor. The company was founded in 1999 as a 50/50 joint venture between Fujitsu Limited of Japan and Siemens AG of Germany...
under the common brand of SPARC Enterprise, superseding Sun's Sun Fire
Sun Fire
The Sun Fire server brand is a series of server computers introduced in 2001 by Sun Microsystems . The Sun Fire branding coincided with the introduction of the UltraSPARC III processor, superseding the UltraSPARC II-based Sun Enterprise series...
and Fujitsu's PRIMEPOWER server product lines.
Systems
| Model | RU Rack unit A rack unit or U is a unit of measure used to describe the height of equipment intended for mounting in a 19-inch rack or a 23-inch rack... |
Max processors | Processor frequency | Max memory | Max disk capacity | GA Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M3000 | 2 | 1× SPARC64 VII | 2.52, 2.75, 2.86 GHz | 64 GB | 4× 2.5" SAS Serial Attached SCSI Serial Attached SCSI is a computer bus used to move data to and from computer storage devices such as hard drives and tape drives. SAS depends on a point-to-point serial protocol that replaces the parallel SCSI bus technology that first appeared in the mid 1980s in data centers and workstations,... |
October 2008 |
| M4000 | 6 | 4× SPARC64 VI SPARC64 VI The SPARC64 VI, code-named Olympus-C, is a microprocessor, developed by Fujitsu. It implements the SPARC V9 instruction set architecture and is compliant with the Joint Programming Specification developed by Fujitsu and Sun. It is used by Fujitsu and Sun Microsystems in their SPARC Enterprise... or VII |
2.15 GHz (VI) or 2.53, 2.66 GHz (VII) | 256 GB | 2× 2.5" SAS Serial Attached SCSI Serial Attached SCSI is a computer bus used to move data to and from computer storage devices such as hard drives and tape drives. SAS depends on a point-to-point serial protocol that replaces the parallel SCSI bus technology that first appeared in the mid 1980s in data centers and workstations,... |
April 2007 (VI), July 2008 (VII) |
| M5000 | 10 | 8× SPARC64 VI or VII | 2.15 GHz (VI) or 2.53, 2.66 GHz (VII) | 512 GB | 4× 2.5" SAS | April 2007 (VI), July 2008 (VII) |
| M8000 | N/A | 16× SPARC64 VI or VII | 2.28, 2.4 GHz (VI) 2.52, 2.88, 3.0 GHz (VII) | 1024 GB | 16× 2.5" SAS | April 2007 (VI), July 2008 (VII) |
| M9000 | N/A | 32 or 64× SPARC64 VI or VII | 2.28, 2.4 GHz (VI) or 2.52, 2.88, 3.0 GHz (VII) | 4096 GB | 64× 2.5" SAS | April 2007 (VI), July 2008 (VII) |
| T1000 | 1 | 1× UltraSPARC T1 | 1.0 GHz | 32 GB | One 3.5" SATA Sata Sata is a traditional dish from the Malaysian state of Terengganu, consisting of spiced fish meat wrapped in banana leaves and cooked on a grill.It is a type of Malaysian fish cake, or otak-otak... or Two 2.5" SAS |
March 2006 |
| T2000 | 2 | 1× UltraSPARC T1 | 1.0, 1.2, 1.4 GHz | 64 GB | Up to four 2.5" SAS | December 2005 |
| T5120 | 1 | 1× UltraSPARC T2 | 1.2, 1.4 GHz | 128 GB | Up to eight 2.5" SAS | November 2007 |
| T5140 | 1 | 2× UltraSPARC T2+ | 1.2, 1.4 GHz | 128 GB | Up to eight 2.5" SAS | April 2008 |
| T5220 | 2 | 1× UltraSPARC T2 | 1.2, 1.4 GHz | 128 GB | Up to sixteen 2.5" SAS | November 2007 |
| T5240 | 2 | 2× UltraSPARC T2+ | 1.2, 1.4 GHz | 256 GB | Up to sixteen 2.5" SAS | April 2008 |
| T5440 | 4 | 4× UltraSPARC T2+ | 1.2, 1.4 GHz | 512 GB | Up to four 2.5" SAS | Oct 2008 |
| T3-1 | 2 | 1× SPARC T3 | 1.65 Ghz | 128 GB | Up to sixteen 2.5" SAS | Sep 2010 |
| T3-2 | 3 | 2× SPARC T3 | 1.65 Ghz | 256 GB | Up to six 2.5" SAS | Sep 2010 |
| T3-4 | 5 | 4× SPARC T3 | 1.65 Ghz | 512 GB | Up to eight 2.5" SAS | Sep 2010 |
SPARC64 VI and SPARC64 VII processor based models (M-class)
The midrange and high-end SPARC64 VISPARC64 VI
The SPARC64 VI, code-named Olympus-C, is a microprocessor, developed by Fujitsu. It implements the SPARC V9 instruction set architecture and is compliant with the Joint Programming Specification developed by Fujitsu and Sun. It is used by Fujitsu and Sun Microsystems in their SPARC Enterprise...
or SPARC64 VII processor based servers are designated "M-class". The "M" indicates mainframe class features.
- M3000 - 1 processor socket, 2U rack-mount
- M4000 - Up to 4 processor sockets, 6U rack-mount
- M5000 - Up to 8 processor sockets, 10U rack-mount
- M8000 - Up to 16 processor sockets, one data center rack
- M9000 - Up to 64 processor sockets, one or two data center racks
Processor
The SPARC64 VI is a dual-core processor, with each core featuring two-way vertical multi-threading (VMT). A M9000 server configured with the maximum number of processors supports running 256 concurrent threads. VMT is a coarse-grained multi-threading implementation. Each core in the SPARC64 VI can handle two strands or threads. VMT switches execution from one strand to the other on the basis of events. To execute instructions from another thread, the pipeline must be saved/flushed and switched to the registers for the other thread. These events include L2 cache misses, a hardware timer exception, interrupts, or some multi-threading-related control instructions. This is also called Switch On Event (SOE) threading.In 2008, Fujitsu released the SPARC64 VII, a quad-core processor, with each core featuring two-way simultaneous multi-threading. Existing M-class servers will be able to upgrade to the SPARC64 VII processors in the field. A SPARC64 VII processor module includes four physical cores, where each core can execute two threads. Each physical core is able to run both threads simultaneously. With SMT
Simultaneous multithreading
Simultaneous multithreading, often abbreviated as SMT, is a technique for improving the overall efficiency of superscalar CPUs with hardware multithreading...
, there is no context-switch time and the two threads share the instruction pipeline smoothly. When both are ready to run, they alternate cycles for superscalar
Superscalar
A superscalar CPU architecture implements a form of parallelism called instruction level parallelism within a single processor. It therefore allows faster CPU throughput than would otherwise be possible at a given clock rate...
instruction issue, and share the functional units according to need.
An important capability of the M-Series is the ability to mix processor generations and clock speeds in the same system and domain. All M-Series servers can have both SPARC64 VI and SPARC64 VII CPUs installed and they will run at their native speeds, with no clocking down to the slowest CPU.
Benchmark record
On April 17, 2007, a Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 achieved 1.032 TFLOPS on the LINPACKLINPACK
LINPACK is a software library for performing numerical linear algebra on digital computers. It was written in Fortran by Jack Dongarra, Jim Bunch, Cleve Moler, and Gilbert Stewart, and was intended for use on supercomputers in the 1970s and early 1980s...
benchmark, making it the fastest
single system supercomputer at that time.
On May 2, 2008, Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server achieved a world performance record on the TPC-H data warehousing benchmark at the 1 Terabyte scale factor using the Oracle Database
Oracle Database
The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
.
As of February 19, 2009, the SPARC Enterprise M8000 holds the 64-thread world performance records on the SPEC
Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation is a non-profit organization that aims to "produce, establish, maintain and endorse a standardized set" of performance benchmarks for computers....
OMP2001 benchmark, both for medium
and for large
UltraSPARC T1 processor based models
The UltraSPARC T1UltraSPARC T1
|right|262px|UltraSPARC T1 processorSun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor, known until its 14 November 2005 announcement by its development codename "Niagara", is a multithreading, multicore CPU...
-based Sun Fire
Sun Fire
The Sun Fire server brand is a series of server computers introduced in 2001 by Sun Microsystems . The Sun Fire branding coincided with the introduction of the UltraSPARC III processor, superseding the UltraSPARC II-based Sun Enterprise series...
T1000 and T2000 are branded to the SPARC Enterprise line:
- T1000 - 1 processor socket, 1U rack-mount
- T2000 - 1 processor socket, 2U rack-mount
UltraSPARC T2 processor based models
In Oct 2007, Sun added the UltraSPARC T2UltraSPARC T2
Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T2 microprocessor is a multithreading, multi-core CPU. It is a member of the SPARC family, and the successor to the UltraSPARC T1. The chip is sometimes referred to by its codename, Niagara 2...
-based servers to the SPARC Enterprise line:
- T5120 - 1 processor socket, 1U rack-mount
- T5220 - 1 processor socket, 2U rack-mount
UltraSPARC T2+ processor based models
In April 2008, Sun added the UltraSPARC T2 Plus-based servers to the SPARC Enterprise line:- T5140 - 2 processor sockets, 1U rack-mount
- T5240 - 2 processor sockets, 2U rack-mount
In October 2008, Sun released the 4-way SMP UltraSPARC T2 Plus-based server:
- T5440 - 4 processor sockets, 4U rack-mount
SPARC T3 processor based models
In September 2010, Oracle announced a range of SPARC T3-based servers. These are branded as the "SPARC T3" series, the "SPARC Enterprise" brand being dropped.- T3-1 Server - 1 processor socket, 2U rack-mount
- T3-1B Server - 1 processor socket, Sun BladeSun BladeThe Sun Blade series was a computer workstation line developed and sold by Sun Microsystems from 2000 to 2006. The Sun Blade architecture was based on the UltraSPARC microprocessor family. The range replaced the earlier Sun Ultra workstation series....
6000 module form-factor - T3-2 Server - 2 processor sockets, 3U rack-mount
- T3-4 Server - 4 processor sockets, 5U rack-mount
According to the official Oracle roadmap, in 2013 there will be 8-socket T3 servers.
Partitioning and virtualization
The M-class supports Dynamic Domains and Dynamic Reconfiguration, which enable a single machine to be divided into multiple electrically isolated partitions.The UltraSPARC T1, UltraSPARC T2/T2+, and SPARC T3 models partition the system using Logical Domains
Logical Domains
Logical Domains is the server virtualization and partitioning technology from Sun Microsystems released in April 2007. It has been re-branded as Oracle VM Server for SPARC since Oracle Corporation completed the acquisition of Sun in January 2010. Each domain is a full virtual machine with a...
.
Both M-class and UltraSPARC T1 models support Solaris Containers
Solaris Containers
Solaris Containers is an implementation of operating system-level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems, first released publicly in February 2004 in build 51 beta of Solaris 10, and subsequently in the first full release of Solaris 10, 2005.It is present in newer OpenSolaris based...
, which supports a maximum of 8191 non-global zones in each Dynamic Domain or Logical Domain.
External links
- Sun SPARC Enterprise Servers (Sun Microsystems)
- Fujitsu Siemens SPARC Enterprise Servers (for European, African and Middle Eastern markets)
- UNIX Servers SPARC Enterprise (Fujitsu global)
- Fujitsu Computer Systems SPARC Enterprise Servers (For North American markets)