Given all this renewed interest in on premise, does Oracle have anything after M8? At one point there was a public roadmap slide that suggested incremental improvements to M8. What's the plan for existing SPARC/Solaris customers? Anyone know?
14 replies (most recent on top)
It's going to be interesting to see whether Fujitsu actually produce another SPARC chip. They have been quietly (and now not so quietly) furiously working on ARM. They know it's the end of the line for SPARC (and hence Solaris). Apart from producing the chip and support chips, someone still needs to put an entire platform around it.
Regarding the roadmaps, notice the safe harbor statement on the first page? These things are just PR to keep the customers happy and focused.
My understanding is that WC couldn't adapt to the MSFT culture. He was lured back with the promise that he would be allowed to lead a full Oracle-sponsored Linux distribution (not the clone of RHEL that they ship nowm aka Oracle Linux). A development team for that distro did get assembled but it didn't last very long and he's basically doing what he did pre-MSFT minus the virtualization teams (e.g VirtualBox).
WC left Oracle to work for Microsoft. He’s now back with Oracle. What happened there at Microsoft?
Yawn, WC pimps some ARM64 Oracle Linux images and suggests that his hobbyist followers install it on their Raspberry Pi's. It's easy to roll out RPI images, let's see the numbers for the Oracle RDBMS on it, where memory bandwidth matters.
It's too late for Fujitsu to be the sole remaining SPARC champion given that they've already committed to ARM for their future servers. Fujitsu really had no choice to de-invest in SPARC because they don't have control of the only OS that runs on it (Solaris) and Oracle has itself distanced itself from Solaris. Yes, there was a report (in here actually) of LE+MH+ Fujitsu negotiations for ORCL to sell Solaris to Fujitsu but if those talks happened, it broke down.
Or maybe instead of paying millions internally they will use another company to develop their Sparc chips - like they have been doling - FUJITSU
everyone in the SPARC engineering is gone, apart very few people for the sustaining in AA team.
M8+ is an overclocked M8, nothing new, that will give only very few % more in performances and it is so power hungry that will be installed only in the M8-8 chassis...... if it ever sees the light that is. rumours are that nor LE nor SC have still approved the release of the chip, only ES has given a formal "technical" ok.
Oracle is no more interested in being an HW provider be it onprem or cloud, full stop. this was made clear on sept17, but was clear to people in the know a lot before.
future is ARM, and Oracle will outsource hw needs to some already identified and invested-in startups. Oracle Linux for ARM is already being developed by WC's team, and it is well on track.
of the current hw portfolio only ExaCC (and maybe a CC version of ZDLRA) will survive, and that's in the short term, don't expect current portfolio to survive the next CY. the new roadmap and strategy will be anticipated to some selected customers in OOW, and made public in dec18.
The answer is to migrate to Linux
M8+ is just a speed bump, design was already finished in 2017 over a year ago, before they nuked the SPARC/microelectronics group. There will not be a M9 from Oracle, everyone's gone.
If all the hardware guys are gone, then how do you explain this?
https://www.oracle.com/assets/sparc-roadmap-slide-2076743.pdf
Perhaps you could ask all the SPARC chip designers & engineers. Oh wait... they're all gone.
Roadmap shows a M8+, and Fujitsu also has a new chip on their roadmap.
There is nothing. M8 is the last oracle SPARC
Good question.
Any takers?