Oracle recently announced its eighth generation
SPARC platform, armed with new levels of security capabilities, performance, and availability for critical customer workloads. SPARC M8 processor-based systems, including the Oracle SuperCluster M8 engineered systems and SPARC T8 and M8 servers, are designed to seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructures and include fully integrated virtualization and management for private cloud. SPARC M8 is compatible with all existing commercial and custom applications and provides them new levels of performance, security capabilities, and availability.
The SPARC M8 processor with Software in Silicon v2 extends the industry’s first Silicon Secured Memory, which provides always-on hardware-based memory protection for advanced intrusion protection and end-to-end encryption and Data Analytics Accelerators (DAX) with open API’s for breakthrough performance and efficiency running Database analytics and Java streams processing. Oracle informed that Oracle Cloud SPARC Dedicated Compute service will also be updated with the SPARC M8 processor.
“SPARC was already the fastest, most secure processor in the world for running Oracle Database and Java. SPARC M8 extends that lead even further,” said Edward Screven, chief corporate architect, Oracle.
Oracle SuperCluster M8: Oracle's
SuperCluster M8 is a ready-to-deploy secure cloud infrastructure for both databases and applications. It is an engineered system that combines compute, networking, and storage hardware with virtualization, operating system, and management software into a single system that is extremely easy to deploy, secure, manage, and maintain. Oracle SuperCluster M8 features the industry’s most advanced security, incorporating a number of unique runtime security technologies, documented and tested system-wide security controls and best practices, and integrated automated compliance verification tools. Oracle SuperCluster M8 is the world’s fastest engineered system, delivering incredible performance under a wide range of workloads ranging from traditional enterprise resource planning to customer relationship management and data warehouses, to e-commerce, mobile applications, and real-time analytics. Equally importantly, it is extremely cost-effective because of its low purchase price; the ease with which the system can be deployed, scaled, managed, and maintained; and its incredibly efficient use of space, power, compute resources, storage, memory, and software licenses.’
Key benefits of M8 clusters
• Built-in hardware encryption to provide end-to-end data security
• Unique protection of application data from memory attacks or exploits of software vulnerabilities
• Fast path to security compliance and ability to remain compliant easily with out-of-the-box security controls
• Co-engineered Oracle Exadata storage technology and Oracle Database 12c to deliver unbeatable performance and efficiency
• Ability to start small and grow, flexible, and easily
Key Features
• Up to 512 CPU cores and 16 TB of memory per rack for database and application processing
• Up to 11 Oracle Exadata Storage Servers per rack
• Integrated ZFS application storage including 160 TB of storage capacity
• 40 Gb/sec (QDR) InfiniBand network
• Built-in, near-zero overhead virtualization using Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Zones
• Support for Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle Solaris 10
SPARC M8-8 Server: SPARC M8-8 server is an eight-processor system that enables organizations to respond to IT demands with extreme security and performance at a lower cost compared to alternatives. It is ideal for a wide range of enterprise-class workloads, including databases, applications, Java, and middleware, especially in a cloud environment. This system is based on the SPARC M8 processor, using the revolutionary Software in Silicon technology from Oracle.
• Based on the advanced SPARC M8 processor, with proven second generation Software in Silicon technology for efficiency, performance, and security
• Scalability within the same family of servers from 32 to 256 cores with complete compatibility for applications and management
• Oracle Solaris 11 operating system for secure and compliant application deployment through single-step patching and immutable zones
• Built-in, no-cost virtualization technology with Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC
• Guaranteed binary compatibility and support for legacy applications that run under Oracle Solaris 10, 9, and 8
• Up to 76 TB of accelerated storage utilizing industry-standard NVMe technology in order to satisfy the most demanding I/O requirements
• The highest levels of reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) in a compact, energy-efficient footprint
SPARC T8 Server: Oracle’s
SPARC T8-1 server is a single-processor system that enables organizations to respond to IT demands with extreme security and performance at a lower cost compared to alternatives. It is ideal for a wide range of enterprise-class workloads, including databases, applications, Java, and middleware, especially in a cloud environment. This system is based on the SPARC M8 processor, using the revolutionary Software in Silicon technology from Oracle.
• Based on the advanced SPARC M8 processor, with proven second generation Software in Silicon technology for efficiency, performance, and security
• Scalability within the same family of servers from 32 to 256 cores with complete compatibility for applications and management
• Oracle Solaris 11 operating system for secure and compliant application deployment through single-step patching and immutable zones
• Built-in, no-cost virtualization technology with Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC
• Guaranteed binary compatibility and support for legacy applications that run under Oracle Solaris 10, 9, and 8
• Up to 64 TB of accelerated storage utilizing industry-standard NVMe technology in order to satisfy the most-demanding I/O requirements
• The highest levels of reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) in a compact, energy-efficient footprint
SPARC M8’s silicon innovation provides new levels of performance and efficiency across all workloads, including:
• Database: Engineered to run Oracle Database faster than any other microprocessor, SPARC M8 delivers 2x faster OLTP performance per core than x86 and 1.4x faster than M7 microprocessors, as well as up to 7x faster database analytics than x86.
• Java: SPARC M8 delivers 2x better Java performance than x86 and 1.3x better than M7 microprocessors. DAX v2 produces 8x more efficient Java streams processing, improving overall application performance.
• In Memory Analytics: Innovative new processor delivers 7x Queries per Minute (QPM)/core than x86 for database analytics.
Oracle is committed to delivering the latest in SPARC and Solaris technologies and servers to its global customers. Oracle’s long history of binary compatibility across processor generations continues with M8, providing an upgrade path for customers when they are ready. Oracle has also publicly committed to supporting Solaris until at least 2034. Let’s look at the promise of SPARC M8 in the segments of Security, Performance, and Cost.
Security
• Silicon Secured Memory, also a feature of Oracle’s SPARC M8 processor, protects data in memory from unauthorized access. In modern computing systems, data that is in memory is not encrypted, making it vulnerable to attacks that take advantage of memory management defects that are pervasive in modern software programs. SPARC M8 processors provide the unique ability to ensure that no software programs may access physical system memory that they are not explicitly intended or authorized to access, eliminating the risk that data held in memory can be compromised through well-known exploits, even when the software programs have defects that would be easy to exploit on other platforms.
• Cryptographic acceleration, a feature of the SPARC M8 processor, provides near-zero overhead end-to-end data encryption with no performance compromise. By adding a broad range of enhanced cryptographic acceleration capabilities to the design of the SPARC M8 processor, it is possible to fully secure data that is stored on disks or transmitted over networks with virtually no perceptible impact on application or database performance and efficiency.
• Read-only virtual machines (known as Oracle Solaris Immutable Zones) ensure that application administrators and compromised applications are unable to accidently alter the configuration of virtual machines in ways that would expose systems to attack.
• End-to-end audit trails allow quick detection of potentially dangerous administrative actions and subsequent without lengthy and error-prone forensic analysis.
• Automated compliance for quick and easy reporting, verification and identification IT systems’ security and compliance with mandated standards and best practices. Oracle SuperCluster supports both the Center for Internet Security (CIS) and Security Technical Information Guide (STIG) security benchmarks, and it is compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
• Administrative access controls allow fine-grained control over the rights and activities available to individual system administrators, including the ability to restrict certain administrative access to specific times and to restrict remote auditing and logging to prevent credential misuse.
• Out-of-the-box security controls and detailed best-practices guidance ensure that Oracle SuperCluster systems are delivered in a secure state, by default, and can be easily adapted to the particular deployment environment with minimal complexity and low risk of accidental security compromises.
Performance
• The SPARC M8 processor’s In-Line Decompression feature allows Oracle Database 12c to store huge in a highly compressed format using dedicated functions in the processor itself making general-purpose compute cores for SQL processing faster.
• The SPARC M8 processor’s In-Memory Query Acceleration feature for Oracle Database In-Memory in Oracle Database 12c provides simultaneous real-time analytics and transaction processing performance that is up to 9x better than with x86 or IBM Power systems.
• Oracle Exadata Storage Server, co-engineered with Oracle Database, delivers the optimal balance of scalability, transaction processing, and batch performance for all Oracle Database workloads.
• Oracle’s InfiniBand fabric is the low-latency, high throughput I/O fabric that ties all of the Oracle SuperCluster system components together, making it possible to horizontally scale the Oracle SuperCluster system.
Cost effectiveness
• The system provides secure multitenancy. Seamlessly integrated scale-up virtualization and a scale-out InfiniBand fabric provide maximum performance and scalability with no wasted compute, memory, or software resources.
• The low-cost, elastic, capacity-on-demand configuration of Oracle SuperCluster M8 allows even small and midsize enterprises to deploy right-sized systems and seamlessly add capacity as business needs change over time.
• Fine-grained software licensing allows the partitioning of cores per server to be turned off and licensed only when needed. As the workload grows and more cores are needed, hard partitioning can be used to assign cores and license software.
• The system provides easy-to-use infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and database as a service (DBaaS) self-provisioning for users.
Review of the M8
This release has intrigued the tech community which is wondering about the time of release- a few weeks ahead of Oracle OpenWorld-and the fact that Sparc M8 processors power the new SPARC T8 systems. It implies that they are not really T8 systems at all, but rather just smaller M8 systems. Oracle clarified it by saying that it is converging the T and M processors. That being said, SPARC M8 has some big architectural changes and is not just a process shrink with a few tweaks here and there. The Sparc M8 is, of course, binary compatible. It can issue four instructions using out-of-order processing that has been common with RISC processors and the chip can have up to 192 instructions in flight at any time.
Comparison of the Sparc T, Sparc M, and Sparc S processors that were based on the S2, S3, and S4 cores.
Source: nextplatform.com
Evident from the table above, there is a slight boost in the L1 instruction cache, and large page memory support has been expanded from 2 GB pages with the prior generations of Sparc chips made by Oracle to 16 GB pages. The Sparc M8 has 32 cores and essentially the same cache structure and “Bixby” family of on-chip NUMA interconnects. The M8 chips have eight threads per core and each Sparc M8 socket has faster main memory, running at 6 percent faster than Sparc M7 and improved memory bandwidth per socket. Sparc M8 chip delivers 185 GB/sec of memory bandwidth per socket, which is 16 percent higher than that of the Sparc M7 at 160 GB/sec.
Source: nextplatform.com
The M8 chip is organized into two halves, each with 16 cores and 32 MB of L3 cache; these two halves are actually blocks of eight cores and two L3 banks, each with 8 MB of L3 cache segment allocated to them. Each M8 core has 32 KB of L1 instruction cache and 16 KB of L1 data cache plus a 128 KB data cache. Every group of four cores has a shared 256 KB instruction cache. Each quarter of the chip has its own memory controller and two memory buffer chips (buffer on board, or BoB, in the diagram) links out to two memory sticks, for a total of 16 sticks per socket, and importantly, one for every two cores to keep processing and memory bandwidth somewhat in step. Each processor has eight of the second generation of Data Analytics Acceleration (or DAX) units that allow for in-memory processing on the Sparc chips, plus four coherencies interconnect units and two coherency crossbars on the die.
Source: nextplatform.com
Scalability per socket has been cut back by a factor of four. In essence, the Bixby interconnect has been pulled back into the M8 package, and it would not be a surprise to find out that the M8 is really a multichip module with two 16-core or more likely four eight-core processors inside a package.
There is plenty of innovation in the Sparc M8 chip, and it is clear that it was created by the owner of the Oracle database and the Java programming language and runtime. The DAX functions include a rev of the SQL in silicon features that debuted in the Sparc M7 and S7 chips two years ago.
References:
• https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-sparc-m8-091817.html
• http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc/supercluster/oracle-supercluster-m8-ds-3884269.pdf
• https://www.oracle.com/servers/sparc/index.html
• http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/sparc-m8-8-ds-3864183.pdf
• Timothy Prickett Morgan, https://www.nextplatform.com, September 18, 2017
• https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E55211_01/