As a consequence to Oracle’s dedication to the SPARC platform, the company announced the new SPARC Solaris-based Exalogic Elastic Cloud T3-1B engineered system, along with a complete refresh of the SPARC server product line.  It’s a move steeped in hopes of Oracle’s larger industry takeover, though this particular step could be somewhat misguided in the grand scheme of things.

SPARC servers are incomparable, if you ask Oracle. It holds a world record OLTP database performance on a TPC-C benchmark with the Oracle Database 11g running on Oracle’s SPARC Supercluster with SPARC T3-4 servers, and outclassed IBM Power 780 server cluster with POWER7 processors and IBM DB2 9.7 database, and is 26 percent better in terms of price and performance.

Oracle also revealed the SPARC Supercluster based on SPARC T3 servers that is constructed with the same technology that brought in the OLTP performance at TPC-C benchmark. It utilized Oracle’s cutting-edge hardware and software technologies which includes SPARC T3 servers, built-in cryptographic accelerators, Oracle’s Sun FlashFire storage, InfiniBand networking and Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance products.

This new SPARC chip is a step towards Oracle’s big takeover, cleaning out its competitors, including HP.

Mr. Ellison said the new hardware—a “supercluster” of Sparc-based servers—set a record for online transaction processing, a measure of performance for running database software, “for any database running on any computer at any time.”  He said the record of more than 30 million transactions per minute on Oracle’s hardware compared with records of around 10 million and 4 million transactions per minute on hardware from rivals International Business Machines Corp. and H-P, respectively.

“We think the H-P machines are vulnerable. We think they’re slow,” Mr. Ellison said. “We’re going to go after them in the marketplace with better software, better hardware and better people, and we’re going to win market share.”  Regarding IBM, Mr. Ellison said: “I like IBM, and I don’t want to tease them very much.”

The SPARC Solaris-based Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud T3-1B is an integration of hardware and software systems that run java and non-java application. It utilizes the scalability, security and integrated chip features of SPARC T3 system. SPARC T-Series and Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series product lines upgrade is thrusting towards the completion of the key milestones defined in the five-year SPARC Solaris-based system roadmap. This includes the delivery of a complete line up of high performance SPARC T3 systems using the industry’s first 16-core SPARC T3 server processor which were revealed at the Oracle Open World 2010, and the advancement of its long-term partnership with Fujitsu. It also announced an enhanced Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers with a new SPARC processor, and the Oracle Solaris 11 Express release this November.

Withstanding the stellar specs of Oracle’s SPARC cloud offerings, it may not be the big take over Oracle’s hoping for, when it’s all said and done.  At  a recent (November 2010) IBM analyst meeting, IBM’s Steve Mills  – the Head of IBM’s software  and hardware  business said, “Despite what Larry  Says…SPARC is Dead.” Mills  said that the microprocessor business is a two company race  between IBM and Intel to see who can  get to  the next gen fastest.  Mills said that the integrated combination of design and fabrication are the keys to success. He said  that fabrication is  the overwhelmingly limiting factor to success.

The SPARC T-Series and Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series runs on Oracle Solaris to optimize the operation of enterprise applications. The foundation of this drive is the “Next-Generation Data Center road show” with 100 events across 35 countries running from July through December.