SPARC Enterprise

The SPARC Enterprise series is a range of UNIX server computers co-developed by Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu introduced in 2007. They are marketed and sold by Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers under the common brand of SPARC Enterprise, superseding Sun's Sun Fire and Fujtisu's PRIMEPOWER server product lines.

Systems

SPARC64 VI and SPARC64 VII processor based models (M-class)

The midrange and high-end SPARC64 VI processor based servers are designated "M-class". The "M" indicates mainframe class features. [cite web
url = http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/i_love_mainframes
title = Community Development Comes to Hardware
accessdate = 2007-04-21
publisher = Sun Microsystems]

* M4000 - Up to 4 processor sockets, 6U rack-mount
* M5000 - Up to 8 processor sockets, 10U rack-mount
* M8000 - Up to 16 processor sockets, one data center rack
* M9000 - Up to 64 processor sockets, one or two data center racks

Processor

The SPARC64 VI is a dual core processor, with each core featuring two-way vertical multithreading (VMT). [cite web
url = http://developers.sun.com/solaris/articles/chip_multi_thread.html
title = Improving Application Efficiency Through Chip Multi-Threading
accessdate = 2008-02-20
publisher = Sun Microsystems] A M9000 server configured with the maximum amount of processors supports running 256 concurrent threads. VMT is a Coarse grained multi-threading implementation. Each core in the SPARC64 VI can handle two strands or threads. VMT switches execution from one strand to the other on the basis of events. To execute instructions from another thread, the pipeline must be saved/flushed and switched to the registersfor the other thread. These events include L2 cache misses, a hardware timer exception, interrupts, or some multi-threading related control instructions. This is also called Switch On Event (SOE) Threading.

In 2008, Fujitsu released the SPARC64 VII, a quad core processor, with each core featuring two-way simultaneous multithreading. Existing M-class servers will be able to upgrade to the SPARC64 VII processors in the field. [cite web
url = http://www.sun.com/servers/sparcenterprise/SPARCEnt-Arch-Final.pdf
title = Sun SPARC Enterprise Server Family Architecture: Flexible, Mainframe-Class Compute Power for the Datacenter
accessdate = 2008-04-21
publisher = Sun Microsystems] A SPARC64 VII processor module includes four physical cores, where each core can execute two threads. Each physical core is able to run both threads simultaneously. With SMT, there is no context switch time and the two threads share the instruction pipeline smoothly. When both are ready to run, they alternate cycles for superscaler instruction issue, and share the functional units according to need.

An important capability of the M-Series is the ability to mix processor generations and clock speeds in the same system and domain. All M-Series servers can have both SPARC64 VI and SPARC64 VII CPUs installed and they will run at their native speed, with no clocking down to the slowest CPU.

Benchmark record

On April 17, 2007, a Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 achieved 1.032 TFLOPS on the LINPACK benchmark, making it the fastestsingle system supercomputer at that time. [cite web
url = http://www.supercomputingonline.com/print.php?sid=13533
title = Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 Breaks a Teraflop
accessdate = 2008-01-14
publisher = supercomputingonline.com]

On May 2, 2008, Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server achieved a world performance record on the TPC-H data warehousing benchmark at the 1 Terabyte scale factor using the Oracle Database. [cite web
url = http://www.tpc.org/tpch/results/tpch_result_detail.asp?id=108050501
title = Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server
accessdate = 2008-05-21
publisher = Transaction Processing Performance Council]

UltraSPARC T1 processor based models

The UltraSPARC T1-based Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 are branded to the SPARC Enterprise line:

* T1000 - 1 processor socket, 1U rack-mount
* T2000 - 1 processor socket, 2U rack-mount

UltraSPARC T2 processor based models

In Oct 2007, Sun added the UltraSPARC T2-based servers to the SPARC Enterprise line:

* T5120 - 1 processor socket, 1U rack-mount
* T5220 - 1 processor socket, 2U rack-mount

UltraSPARC T2+ processor based models

In April 2008, Sun added the UltraSPARC T2 Plus-based servers to the SPARC Enterprise line:

* T5140 - 2 processor sockets, 1U rack-mount
* T5240 - 2 processor sockets, 2U rack-mount

Partitioning and virtualization

The M-class supports "Dynamic Domains" and "Dynamic Reconfiguration", [cite web
url = http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0407/820-2084.html
title = Introduction to Dynamic Reconfiguration and Capacity on Demand for Sun SPARC Enterprise Servers
accessdate = 2007-04-25
publisher = Sun Microsystems] [cite web
url = http://www.sun.com/servers/sparcenterprise/SPARCEnt-HA-Final.pdf
title = High Availability in the Data Center
accessdate = 2007-04-26
publisher = Sun Microsystems] [cite web
url = http://www.sun.com/servers/sparcenterprise/SPARCEnt-ResMan-Final.pdf
title = System and Resource Management
accessdate = 2007-04-26
publisher = Sun Microsystems] which enable a single machine to be divided into multiple electrically isolated partitions.

The UltraSPARC T1 and UltraSPARC T2/T2+ models partition the system using Logical Domains.

Both M-class and UltraSPARC T1 models support Solaris Containers, which supports a maximum of 8191 non-global zones in each Dynamic Domain or Logical Domain.

References

External links

* [http://www.sun.com/servers/sparcenterprise/ Sun SPARC Enterprise Servers] (Sun Microsystems)
* [http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/products/unix_servers/sparc_enterprise/index.html Fujitsu Siemens SPARC Enterprise Servers] (for European, African and Middle Eastern markets)
* [http://www.fujitsu.com/global/services/computing/server/sparcenterprise/ UNIX Servers SPARC Enterprise] (Fujitsu global)
* [http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com/www/products_sparc.shtml?products/servers/sparc/index Fujitsu Computer Systems SPARC Enterprise Servers] (For North American markets)