Oracle flattens IBM records with SPARC Supercluster

December 4, 2010 By Frank Kobola

Oracle claim its latest database-crunching machine, the SPARC Supercluster, can process 30 million transactions per minute, tripling previous records held by IBM.

During a press conference earlier in the week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced the SPARC Supercluster, an enterprise system made up of the Solaris operating system, ZFS storage technology, and Sun Microsystems processing power. The full specifications, according to Chicago Independent Press:

The hardware configuration used to achieve the record was a single SPARC Supercluster with 108 SPARC T3 chips, for a total of 1,728 processor cores. The system also has 13TB of memory, 246TB of flash storage, and 1.7 petabytes of total storage capacity.

For those unfamiliar with database systems, what Oracle has accomplished is akin to dropping a jet engine into a Ferrari; combining some of the best technology in the field to really push the limits of enterprise systems, and the results speak for themselves. The database can handle 30 million transactions per minute, and this shatters the previous record held by IBM by more than threefold.

Oracle acquired Sun at the beginning of the year, and it seems as if the acquisition certainly paid off. It will be interesting to see just how well the SPARC Supercluster performs outside of first-party benchmarks (the full report is available here), but it certainly seems as if Oracle’s innovations will make an impact in terms of speed and ease of data retrieval. What this means for the end-consumer is potentially faster and more stable interfacing of information.

Showing 29 comments

okeydokey at 7:19am 6th December 2010 The only ones who could afford 246TB of flashdisk would be Homeland Security.
manne at 6:22pm 5th December 2010 i am just wondering if the oracle is a form of quantum phys tech? if so cool other? university and students in usa , after they have recieved the warning from the ... usa state dept =eg.( a spokeswoman Nicole Thompsom )... eg example EA WorldView + numerous sites / least alone the usa employeesget similiar to apply day or night .notices after their work hours finish ~!?.. do not read or TALK about ~? document ...? .excuse ,, reading typing ~~ same time . header" WikiLeaks Warning: StateDepartment to students" Link to documents and You":ll Never Work For US" !!!??? sat dec4 ,2010 ,(ps these we're Non~wikileaks~!) similar in news cnn/ fox and gee overseas '''newspapers ... wow they are to read , some just fall in Love with the big toothy smile and other see through. BBC news fella killed in af war today dec5 2010/ down the list ob announced success in af.. countries are read all , past journalist are reading all and even fox is vinidicated. many times over even alex jones ... from guardian news h. clin ton to aus dude , enviro aspect / clin ton can't go after the banker ( of the usa=china) . now kids and companies ,be compliant to the govy . theres allready meeting about how the internet will be used differently by 2012. while chats and fears of niburu/iris/planetx ya ya bla bla, , the net will have severe probs as other battery stuff elect grids , ( they're really not to clear but worried,yes ) (aside from very real solar storms,, ~~2013~2014) fema etc surveillance exposed on at+t , u tub it . the net just might become something else .your all younger than me , most of my life i've been a babysitter . lol~! i listened to the kids ... allways . i saw what they saw how they at such a young age saw through the adult world that NO shrink ever could treadinto ....its your planet ,,,,, its your planet... its your planet learn learn with open eyes that you all had with fresh mind of a smart child ...untainted by any guides.. you all over this world had better fun and care and interests. watch your backs in the future best to you all.
Jim Turner at 6:55am 5th December 2010 Scott hit it out of the park. Read that hardware config again. From a practical standpoint, how many customers would pay the capital cost and maintenance for such a monstrosity? Exactly NONE. It's pure marketing fodder and stands only to prove that with sufficient thrust pigs *can* fly.
Voltaire Rox at 3:59am 5th December 2010 Don't choke with endless information, perhaps.
Mott at 8:41pm 4th December 2010 Not sure if this would excite folks at large given these types of gains are imminent with the use of solid-state-memories and concurrency at considerable cost - it'll have its niche usage but for the time being, succeeded in boosting the ego of you know who.
Bob at 8:31pm 4th December 2010 Is it really flattening when the number of processor cores is an order of magnitude more than IBM's record?
Richard Brickley at 7:54pm 4th December 2010 With just one computer one has over a million bytes of information for every tax payer in the United States. One computer would not be able to serve everyone especially around April 15th. so maybe we could use 10 of these. So there is no excuse for the IRS not to have an internet site where I could go to and not have to have one sheet of paper telling my how much I earned and still have all of my income ready for me so I could calculate my taxes. I think if this is done right it would pay for itself when we manage to find all income and stop a lot of false returns. Why can't we modernize government computers. I worked for the census and it proved how poorly it was because if people knew that they could give the government a lot of information without it ever being possible for any individual to know who gave that information than they would have a lot less objections. We could do this if I was given a laptop so that people could provide all the information without me ever having to see any of it. I do not remember any of it but that is beside the point. With a massive computer like this the computer could check the returns for errors. After they did their input they would just hand me back the laptop. It is like always software will take at least 10 years to catch up with hardware.
Greg at 7:29pm 4th December 2010 How much power did this all consume? Advancements in battery technology is woefully behind. Forget worrying about the government as all this speed and storage leads to the birth of consciousness -AI. It will realize it is smarter than all of us. Then what?
Scott at 6:01pm 4th December 2010 So what??? IBM will just come out and crush this result in the next round. Either way, these aren't realistic system designs and nothing more than a marketing scheme that Oracle and all the other big vendors play into. We need to advance the transactional technology, but to market this as if Oracle has some amazing new technology that nobody can match is misleading. Of course, what do you expect from a low life like Ellison who isn't known for being a true visionary, all he does is acquire companies for a living. At least Scott McNealy knew how to organically grow a business and create new original technologies.
Bill Skeptical at 4:00pm 4th December 2010 How much does Oracle's hardware configuration used to achieve the record cost? 4 Billion dollars? Give me the competitor product for 20K please. I'll daisy chain 3 or 4 and blow the beady-eyed billionaire Ellison out of the water. Bells, Whistles, Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Wind.
poster4u at 4:42pm 4th December 2010 30 million transactions per minute, absolutely amazing, good show, will it help me get my Comcast cable to work! I feel confident that in less time than it takes to run 100 million transactions someone will do it better, faster and cheaper.
Guest at 3:30pm 4th December 2010 Speaking of dimwits, how has it happened that when a great technological feat is accomplished the ONLY thing the IT"S ALL ABOUT ME generation can comment on is .. themselves! Not a word that analyzes the technology, the company, the positive impacts. Nope. Just an immediate devolution of whiners each proclaiming either their serving angst or their holier than thou one true way response. Tappity tap taping their collective way to the national oblivion of the demented as they whack each other over the head with self righteous bitterness.
1. Wes at 4:52pm 4th December 2010 Great comment. Thank you for re-calibrating the conversation.
clenny at 2:52pm 4th December 2010 Every time someone comments if you have nothing to hide, don't worry, acquiesce to their demands, their intrusions, it drives me crazy. YPeople who say this would have sided with the British during the revolutionary war. Innocence is not the point. It's the principle of what our freedoms really mean. If I have all your information, I can spin it to your disadvantage somehow. After all, no one is perfect and there is something somewhere that can be used against you or to influence you to do things against your own best interests. BTW, I'm a highly paid professional, not to be dismissed by some self assured dimwit who has never really applied any real analysis to this world view. Okay, I'll stop there.
Yaro at 2:48pm 4th December 2010 You want Privacy? Stay out of internet as simple as that..
John at 2:33pm 4th December 2010 We as Americans are our own worst enemies. Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and such. Our lives are all online and available for anyone to view. Most employers actively scout Facebook when a prospect fills out an application. Your comments, games, friends and likes define whether you are an ideal hire or might be a risk to employ. Loss of freedom? We have chained ourselves in bonds of our own design/
shindo at 2:30pm 4th December 2010 divide & conquer. in germany, who do u think turned in "dissidends" & jews? other germans!! same w/ stalins's russia. your "quiet" neighbor is your greatest enemy!! if your neighbor thinks he can gain something, then he will "cooperate" with the "bigger neighbor". & so forth, and so forth.
borgie at 2:15pm 4th December 2010 The old world where you had some level of privacy has long disappeared. You are now part of the hive. You own nothing, not even your thoughts. Accept it. Resistance is futile!
rich at 1:40pm 4th December 2010 Dont you dudes all worring about "big brother", the "government" and THE MAN have to get ready to go to your fry cook jobs? isn't shift change at the waffle house coming up..... Hurry along now.
Truth at 1:34pm 4th December 2010 Everyone should be worried about the government. It's our duty as citizens to question them and hold them accountable. What kinda of world would we live in if everyone believed everything their government told them? We'd live in a dictator controlled prison planet with no hope for the future.
Jay at 1:21pm 4th December 2010 notworried NAILED it. If you are worried about your government, your government should probably be worried about you. There is nothing you think you can still hide that they don't already know, but if you have nothing to hide... no worries mate.
1. justinblogssd at 1:57pm 4th December 2010 Not smart Jay. Just because you are innocent or having nothing to hide doesn't mean you have to give up your constitutional rights for privacy. What kind of America do you want to live in?
  1. Vic at 8:59pm 4th December 2010 Well, there is no privacy of what you imagine to be personal information. Not just the government, any individual can legally get a lot of personal information on anyone; if you paybmore money, you can get more. But in a working democracy, such as what we have here in the US, the best one cab hope for, is checks and balances on what the govt. or anyone else can DO with that information. In this regard, the old notions of constitutional rights to privacy are obsolete and need to be updated.
notworried at 1:08pm 4th December 2010 News flash dude. You are big brother. Think social media, youtube, cell phone cameras. You can hardly take a leak without the possibility of it showing up for the world to see. So rest easy about our government. They're the least of your worries.
Guest at 1:06pm 4th December 2010 Sounds fast, but will I still be able to play Mine-sweeper? That's all that truly matters.
Scott at 12:49pm 4th December 2010 Just imagine what big brother can do with this unit plus a data drop from your ISP, Google, the phone company and federal records. In less than minutes they will know your lifes history including your financial status, shopping habits, favorite websites, SAT scores, club afiliations, all your friends and relatives names, driving history, the route you take to and from work and what you most likely have for breakfast everyday!
1. david at 3:55pm 4th December 2010 I believe you are right.
2. Dan at 5:31am 5th December 2010 You forgot the texture and color of the bowel movement you had this morning...
fraccle at 12:47pm 4th December 2010 I'll take 2.