The former kings of enterprise –– Oracle, IBM, BlackBerry –– have had a rough go of it these past few years, as the consumer market has pushed the tech industry’s focus from sheer power to how easy it is to use the actual devices. Which is why many are wondering if Oracle is taking the best approach with its latest Sun Microsystems Sparc server chip.
Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, unveiled the latest Sparc chip, the Sparc T5, on Tuesday, calling it the “World’s Fastest Microprocessor.”
The accompanying press release makes some big claims:
“Oracle’s new SPARC T5 servers have set 17 world records(1) and are the world’s best platforms for enterprise computing at any scale, delivering the best value for database and enterprise applications,” the release page says.
The company explains well how such power is even more important in today’s increasingly cloud-based computer environment:
“Businesses today need the computing power to exploit Big Data to maximum advantage, to use analytics to discover growth and opportunities, and turn social streams into market intelligence,” the release page says. “Traditional systems simply don’t have the horsepower to handle those demanding tasks.”
But Oracle's place at the top may not be as much earned as simply handed off, in a default victory.
Ashlee Vance at BusinessWeek posted an article Wednesday explaining how Oracle’s claims are a bit distorted by a reality that appears to be leaving companies like Oracle behind.
“In its glory days, Sun was one of a handful of companies—IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Compaq, SGI—that made their own processors for high-end servers,” Vance writes. “Over time the cost of building custom chips rose and Intel’s (INTC) chips became an industry standard. Today, IBM and Oracle/Sun are the only members of this group still making their own chips, which in turn run their own operating systems—AIX and Solaris, respectively.”
And the “world’s fastest” claim is a bit dubious as well.
“When Ellison describes Sparc as the fastest chip in the world, he’s doing so based on one of these benchmarks: TPC-C,” Vance writes. “The sad reality, though, is that the system Oracle beat to get the top TPC-C score is a five-year-old computer from IBM. Most of the benchmark scores in the top 10 are more than five years old. Companies have pretty much given up on this ‘world’s strongest computer’ competition.”
While they may be pushing their luck a little with the sales pitch, the new servers are more powerful, and could be of great use to an increasingly specialized audience.
“Oracle has refreshed its SPARC family with the world’s fastest processor and launched the world’s fastest single server for Database, Java and multi-tier applications,” said John Fowler, executive vice president of Systems at Oracle. “The new SPARC T5 and M5 systems leapfrog the competition with up to 10x the performance of the previous generation, offering an unbeatable value for midrange and high-end enterprise computing.”
