One Billion Transistors, 16 SPARC Cores Combined in a Single SoC
Sun’s Niagara 3, a one billion-transistor, 16-core processor, and the IBM POWER7 are the subject of Jon Stokes’s Ars Technica piece that introduces readers to the floorplan of both chips.
One Suggestion: Filesystem Cache Centric Directory Service Architecture
The basics of flash memory are the topic of a blog entry in The Zone Manager. Engineer Brad Diggs attempts to explain why flash through the ZFS secondary cache, or L2ARC, and ZFS Intent Log (ZIL) can improve overall directory performance. He also asserts the use of flash memory and ZFS will enable “radical” new directory services architectures, and explains further in a secondary posting.
Here Are Some Issues to Ponder
Are the advances in Intel processor design edging SPARC processors out of the marketplace, asks Karim Berrah in a recent blog entitled “SPARC or Intel?” He offers some points of comparison that result in a necessarily ambiguous conclusion, as each processor has advantages in its favor, according to him.
Delivers I/O Performance Equaling up to 300 Disk Drives
The Sun Flash Accelerator F20 PCIe Card is a Flash PCIe card with an integrated disk controller that increases server storage I/O and application performance. Targeted at I/O intensive applications, such as databases with 4K block aligned workloads, the Sun Flash Accelerator delivers I/O performance equaling that of up to 300 disk drives, Sun reports.
The Ideal Platform for Database Consolidation
A four-page brochure from Sun makes a case for using the Sun Storage 7000 family for consolidating oracle databases in these sections:
The ChallengeThis article also list the key feature of the Sun Storage 7000 for databases.
Flash systems are a technological marvel — and their business value can be equally impressive
In a recent Sun Inner Circle article, Sun’s Flash Technologist, Michael Cornwell, shares how Sun’s customers are already reaping the business value of deploying Flash systems in their datacenters and how you can get the best from your Flash investment.
To the question, “What is the business case for broader use of Flash technology?” Mark said, “Enterprise Flash products offer increased performance with a significantly smaller footprint in the datacenter. In many cases, Flash provides higher value than any other alternative to boost throughput and application response times for business-critical IT.”
A Clear Path to Increased ROI 
“Virtualizing Enterprise Application Infrastructure with Sun Chip Multithreading (CMT) Technology Using Sun’s Bult-in, No-cost Virtualization Technologies to Dramatically Increase ROI” is the long title of a relatively brief (16 pages) Sun white paper. The authors write that IT managers, drive to lower both capital and operating expenditures while increasing capacity for more application services and growing markets must determine ways to reduce both the number and complexity of the systems in the corporate infrastructure. These managers must simultaneously deliver increasing performance, capacity, and security.
Performance and Scalability Results Are Impressive on CONUS 2.5 km Dataset
The blog posting on Sun BestPerf by Paul Kinney reports on the results of Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) code running on twelve Sun Blade X6275 server modules housed in the Sun Blade 6048 chassis, using the 2.5 km CONUS benchmark dataset. According to Kinney, the Sun Blade X6275 cluster was able to achieve 373 GFLOP/s on the CONUS 2.5-KM Dataset. Further, the results demonstrate an 91% speedup efficiency, or 11x speedup, from 1 to 12 blades. The current results were run with turbo on, he adds.
Supported on Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 and M9000 Servers 
There are new higher performance 2.88GHz quad-core SPARC64 VII processor/memory boards (CMU) with a higher throughput memory controller (MAC+) available to order for new Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000-64 servers. The 2.88GHz SPARC64 VII quad-core options can be mixed and matched in the SPARC Enterprise M9000 servers with the current SPARC64 VI (2.28 or 2.4GHz) and SPARC64 VII (2.52GHz) options. Availability of the CMU as field upgrades and on the SPARC Enterprise M8000 and M9000-32 servers are expected to be announced by year’s end.
Aggregate up to 72 QDR 4x Ports into a Single 1RU Switch
The Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 72 joins the Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 648 and Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36 in Sun’s third generation family of InfiniBand (IB) switches. The one rack unit (RU) switch is a complete, ultra-slim, ultra-dense switch fabric solution for Sun server clusters up to 72 Quad Data Rate (QDR) IB nodes. Most importantly, the switch integrates with the Sun Blade 6048 InfiniBand QDR Switched Network Express Module, scaling up to over 576 end nodes.
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