Sparc M7 Tops 10 Billion Transistors

摘要

It's a good thing Oracle doesn't sell millions of Sparc server processors, or the world might run out of sand. The next-generation Sparc M7 weighs in with more than 10 billion transistors on a die we estimate at about 700mm2. Each of its 32 CPU cores can simultaneously execute eight threads, and the chip has more than 70MB of cache. The biggest Sparc M7 system can encompass 64 sockets, which would total 2,048 CPUs, 4.4GB of cache, 16,384 threads, and up to 128 terabytes (TB) of physical memory. What to do with this monster? Run Oracle's database software, of course. Since Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010 and took over SPARC development, it has executed a surprisingly aggressive roadmap that has new processors coming out every year (see MPR 9/19/11, "Oracle Extends SPARC Commitment"). Moreover, their performance is setting benchmark records (see MPR 4/15/13, "Oracle Says SPARC Is Tops"). Because Oracle is virtually the only customer for these processors, the architects can tune them for the company's famous enterprise software. Consequently, Sparc processors are gradually evolving into Oracle ASICs-without sacrificing general-purpose programmability.