Are you not aware that Sun's market growth has been almost entirely in X64 systems, as opposed to SPARC? And surely you noticed that just about every recently announced Sun system has been Intel-based? They have even pushed out one of the first six-core Xeons in the market. Clearly Sun gets the fact that it's a X64 future, and they've already taken steps to be a part of it.

No one likes to team with a loser. It's an important lesson we learn in middle school.

Sun has not only been ignored because of their $1B MySQL joke but they have been priced out of the market for the T2 processors. The T5440 Batoka will require 24 Oracle licenses which is approximately $1.1M. At that cost Oracle should be buying the boxes and giving them to customers for free with the software. Sun's demise was it's poor "performance/Oracle license" and this the MySQL purchase was not only the last nail in the coffin, but it was a huge spike.

Why the Sun bashing?

IBM also make large revenues by shipping Power based processors for many institutions running Oracle so why was this article specicicly writtien against Sun?

Also lets remember a couple of things here:

1) Sun have a strong relationship with Intel ask Intel what there prefered OS is or even the only OS they have licenced for themselves. I bet you it isn't Linux

2) Sun sell Intel currently upto 4 sockets not just AMD

Lets try some unbiased journalism next time ElReg

Unbiased journalism from ElReg? Dream on.

Didn't Sun buy MySQL in January 2008?

Just for the record a T5440 would require 12 Oracle CPU Licences, but then it has these things called domains which allow you to partition up your server, so you can buy the number of licences you need to suit you processing profile. 4 Cores for database, 4 cores for Application Server, quite a bit of grunt. Oracle's core multiplier is .75 for a T2 compared to .5 for x86, but .5 would be fairer.

12 CPU licences still cost an eye watering £282,504.10 including maintenance, but then a T5440 does actually pack a hell of a lot of processing power into a small box, like 16 cores and 128 threads, all be it at 1.4Ghz, compared to a core 2 duo at say 2.8Ghz and how many threads?, it's a different beast entirely. More like an E25K, without the I/O bandwidth.

I also hadn't notices Oracle were any less inclined to sell their licences on Sun.

I hope this man isn't paid to communicate.

At 0.75 of a license per core a fully spec'd T5440 would require 24 Oracle Enterprise licenses (32 cores x 0.75 licenses).

It is true that you can resource cap the CPU usage using Solaris Containers, but Oracle don't recognise Logical Domains (LDoms) as a hard partitioning method for capping CPU resource. So even if you had a 4 core LDom set up for Oracle you would still need to license all cores present in the server whether you are using them or not.

Oracle was pushing Linux very hard for a couple of years before Sun bought MySQL.

"....a T5440 does actually pack a hell of a lot of processing power into a small box...... More like an E25K...." Having had to produce builds to replace fully-loaded E25Ks I can quite confidently say that the T5440 running Oracle in the real world would get stomped all over by an E25K!

I'd also like to address the Sunshine fallacy that Oracle is just upset because Sun bought MySQL - Oracle work with other partners that have much more competitive database and application server packages just fine, such as IBM. The reality is Oracle sees less and less reason to work with Sun seeing as they are falling further and further behind the other main vendors. A simple measure of the Sun decline is that both IBM, HP and Dell have more Oracle instances running on their kit than Sun, mainly because of their massive lead in x86 server marketshare, and that is where Oracle see the growth and the need to compete fiercest against rivals like M$ SQL.

A T5440 is no where near equal to a E25K, that is close to the silliest thing I've ever heard. A T5440 has 16 cores on two chips, all those cores share onboard cache. A thread gives absolutely no CPU number crunching power in fact it lowers it due to scheduling. Where threads give benefits is when the CPU is waiting on some other task: i.e. storage, etc. you can schedule something else. It's pure stupidity to say it's anywhere near a E25k, it's barely a v1290.

Talking Oracle, let's compare a T5440 vs a HP Dl580:

DL580= 4x 4 core 2.93 Ghz CPU's = total 46.88Ghz

T5440 = 2x 8 core 1.4 Ghz CPU's = total 22.4Ghz

DL580 = 2x 4M L2 cache per socket = 32M total L2 cache

T5440 = 4M L2 cache per socket = 8M total L2 cache

Assume list price for Oracle Enterprise RAC ~= $60k/CPU

DL580 = 16 cores * 60k * .5 = $480k

T5440 = 16 cores * 60k * .75 = $720k

So for less than half the total Mhz processing power, a quarter of the L2 cache, and $240,000 more I can use a T5440 for Oracle RAC. This my friends is why the Oracle is running from the Sparc architecture, and why saying the T5440 is anything near a E25k is friggin silly.

Hi Insane geek,

You should speak nicely with your local Sun rep, sign an NDA and go look at the M-values.

5440's are not out yet but they are going to be higher than 6900's (I was suprised where the current 5240's are compared to other Sun kit & compared to the Intel/AMD kit) and are going to be on-par with a mid-range specced 25k.

Go and look at the real figures instead of making hot air like the older kit or higher frequency new gear does.

Umm... if the T5440's are not out, then was the heck are *these* page off of Sun's website? (I can even buy a T5440 according to sun.com, guess I have magic back-door to Sun powers)

http://www.sun.com/servers/netra/t5440/specs.xml

http://www.sun.com/servers/netra/t5440/datasheet.pdf

Tell me do those two documents from SUN's website link to a T5440, tell me do those same docs say that the T5440 has any specs other than what I state.

I'm not making anything up, it's right there off of Sun's website! I went off the PDF's for the T5440 directly from Sun's website! I guess I have some L33T powers to be able to goto's Sun's website, search for T5440 and get a magical pdf telling me information for the T5440 that isn't out yet. Unless you are now going to tell me that you were meaning a different T5440 than the T5440 that appears in Sun's link, or that Sun is just screwing with people and putting up tech specs for a T5440 that actually aren't for a T5440 (har, har you got me Sun, splashing T5440 all over the docs and then tricking me). I'm wondering that maybe you should go get "real figures instead of making hot air", because all my information came *directly* from Sun's website.

I'm guessing that you are going to go on you merry little way, because you now realize you look pretty stupid after that.

If I move off Sun, I might save a couple hundred dollars on my next server. if I move off Oracle (to MySQL), I save MILLIONS. Geez, I wonder what I'll be doing. Perhaps someone should survey Oracle's customers to see how happy they are with MySQL - that would tell you a lot about why Sun's CEO wasn't invited on stage this year.

The spec you link to is a Netra T5440 which will be different from the SPARC Enterprise T5440 which is not yet shipping. The Netra T5440 actually seems to be a T5240 with a couple of extra I/O slots.

The "Batoka" SPARC Enterprise T5440 will be a 4 socket, 8 Cores per socket, T2+ 32 Core server.

Hi again InsaneGeek,

Please stop trolling, I'm not here to insult you and no, I don't look stupid. It appears you may as your mis-informed. Below is a link to material to show you that a back-of-a-fag-packet calculation you made over CPU speeds (ie: adding them together) is not a valid method of calculating a servers workload capacity.

http://blogs.sun.com/mrbenchmark/

I for one wish M-values were public as you'd see something interesting in the M-value for 4socket (quad core as well) compared to a 2socket (8 core) T5240. If public it would silence the zealots in our company who lean toward preferred vendors regardless of price, they don't like talking about M-values in meetings here with management as it exposes price points that make other vendors look a bit weaker.

I'm not citing the figures & breaching our NDA, just please stop waffling, go and ask Sun what an M-value means and go sign a NDA and stop inventing metrics.

Thanks to whoever the other anon was for reinforcing the 4socket T5440 is not yet out, Sun have introduced a bloody confusing name, how's about for the same server range a T5240 for volume and N5240 for the netra version. Idiots in the Sun marketing dept no doubt!

"It is true that you can resource cap the CPU usage using Solaris Containers, but Oracle don't recognise Logical Domains (LDoms) as a hard partitioning method for capping CPU resource. So even if you had a 4 core LDom set up for Oracle you would still need to license all cores present in the server whether you are using them or not."

All you have to do is run a capped non-global container within the LDom which is running Oracle. Oracle does recognize the capped zone as a license limit.

Honestly, all software should be deployed in a non-global zone, and all Solaris servers should have at least one non-global zone established to run software. It makes for more secure computing.

Oracle is not happy with sun purchasing mysql, easpecially when Elison wanted mysql for himself...

There is no doubt X86 will eat away from the market share of sparc, power, itanium systems... of course unless they inovate, the USparc T2 is best at servig web pages, and no CPU is faster at serving encrypted content...

Mysql is a very good oracle replacement on the low end, on the large multi terabyte warehouse apps I would advise to take a look at Sybase IQ, or other column oriented dbs ...