Oracle surprises with new Sparc chip launch

I don't know the details, but integrated software and hardware can give performance benefits not possible with modular architecture. eg. iPhone, consoles vs. PC with comparable CPU/GPU. Of course, a more appropriate comparison is with what IBM does.

Perhaps we can expect some proprietary extensions to java that will scream on that particular Sparc? Of course, that ruins Sun's dream... but the dreamer is no more. Or, closer to home for Oracle, that its database screams on it... Where they use this integration trick really depends on where they feel a little extra performance would beat the competition.

The Sparc T series are relatively interesting chips. They offer logical segmentation for virtualization and IO, which is supported in Solaris and OpenBSD - you could, for example, run an OpenBSD firewall and a Solaris webserver in one unit.

They also have chip level threading, which is similar to Intel's hyperthreading, but much more dense - 8 threads per CPU core on most models.

These chips are designed for processing and network IO - they come with dual 10 gigabit ethernet on the CPU, but limited PCIe expansion compared even to most desktop PC's. Great for a compute server.

I wish the older ones would come down in price - the original T1000 servers are still going for nearly 2k on Ebay...