SPARC Enterprise

All you want to know about SPARC Enterprise

The SPARC Enterprise series is a range of UNIX servers co-developed by Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu. They are marketed and sold by Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers.

Contents

Systems

Model RU CPU Family CPU Models Memory Disk GA Date
M4000 6 4 SPARC64 VI 2.15 GHz 128GB 2 2.5" SAS April 2007
M5000 10 8 SPARC64 VI 2.15 Ghz 256GB 4 2.5" SAS April 2007
M8000 N/A 16 SPARC64 VI 2.28, 2.4 GHz 512GB 16 2.5" SAS April 2007
M9000 N/A 64 SPARC64 VI 2.28, 2.4 Ghz 2048GB 64 2.5" SAS April 2007
M4000 6 4 SPARC64 VII 2.4 GHz 128GB 2 2.5" SAS July 2008
M5000 10 8 SPARC64 VII 2.4 Ghz 256GB 4 2.5" SAS July 2008
M8000 N/A 16 SPARC64 VII 2.52 GHz 512GB 16 2.5" SAS July 2008
M9000 N/A 64 SPARC64 VII 2.52 Ghz 2048GB 64 2.5" SAS July 2008
T1000 1 1 UltraSPARC T1 1.0 GHz 32GB One 3.5" SATA or Two 2.5" SAS April 2007
T2000 2 1 UltraSPARC T1 1.0, 1.2, 1.4 GHz 64GB Up to four 2.5" SAS April 2007
T5120 1 1 UltraSPARC T2 1.2, 1.4Ghz 64GB Up to four 2.5" SAS November 2007
T5140 1 2 UltraSPARC T2+ 1.2 GHz 64GB Up to four 2.5" SAS April 2008
T5220 2 1 UltraSPARC T2 1.2, 1.4Ghz 64GB Up to eight 2.5" SAS November 2007
T5240 2 2 UltraSPARC T2+ 1.2, 1.4 GHz 128GB Up to sixteen 2.5" SAS April 2008

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.[1]

  • 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.[2] 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 registers for 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.[3] 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 fastest single system supercomputer at that time. [4]

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. [5]

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,[6][7][8] 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

  1. ^ "Community Development Comes to Hardware". Sun Microsystems. Retrieved on 2007-04-21.
  2. ^ "Improving Application Efficiency Through Chip Multi-Threading". Sun Microsystems. Retrieved on 2008-02-20.
  3. ^ "Sun SPARC Enterprise Server Family Architecture: Flexible, Mainframe-Class Compute Power for the Datacenter". Sun Microsystems. Retrieved on 2008-04-21.
  4. ^ "Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 Breaks a Teraflop". supercomputingonline.com. Retrieved on 2008-01-14.
  5. ^ "Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server". Transaction Processing Performance Council. Retrieved on 2008-05-21.
  6. ^ "Introduction to Dynamic Reconfiguration and Capacity on Demand for Sun SPARC Enterprise Servers". Sun Microsystems. Retrieved on 2007-04-25.
  7. ^ "High Availability in the Data Center". Sun Microsystems. Retrieved on 2007-04-26.
  8. ^ "System and Resource Management". Sun Microsystems. Retrieved on 2007-04-26.

External links

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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC_Enterprise"

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