
A 20nm 32-Core 64MB L3 Cache SPARC M7 Processor - luu
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7062931&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D7062931
======
mrbill
I run a community-oriented Sun/SPARC site, since 1997 (and was invited to be
part of the private prerelase testing/eval of OpenSolaris) and it's really sad
what Oracle has done to the enthusiast community.

The "old" Sun gave me a loaded T1000, gratis, to run the site on (I'd actually
asked for one for a review, and they said "Keep it for the site."). The "new"
Sun/Oracle gave me the finger.

I had to move everything off the T1K and onto a Debian box hosted at home
because I couldn't afford a support contract for it (required to get _any_
patches/updates, even for the OS install that came on it).

I've often likened Oracle's treatment of the hobbyist/enthusiast community as
"they shot it in the face and said unless you're going to spend $XXXX with us,
we don't care about you. Period."

The "old" Sun recognized that if sysadmin types played with older gear at home
and enjoyed it, they were more likely to recommend it for purchases at work,
and they encouraged it.

~~~
dman
The "old" Sun went out of business following the practices it did. I dislike
Oracle as much as anyone else, but Sun isnt a great role model in terms of
savvy business practices.

~~~
tormeh
But in this case I think Sun was right. The marginal cost of making a
processor is pretty low, I imagine, and it's not like enthusiast sites can be
pumped for much money anyway.

------
Symmetry
If you're interested in the M7 the Hot Chips conference talk was pretty
interesting. It starts at the 33 minute mark in this video.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4f62FJGVcE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4f62FJGVcE)

If you're interested in CPU architecture the Hot Chips talks are generally
worthwhile. They're available for free a few months after the conference.

------
damm
That can only be yours for just 150,000 downpayment.

SPARC has been pretty long track history and I admit I really used to love Sun
Sparc Servers; now I just look at them and think of the cost and cry.

------
e12e
Without access to the full PDF, this blurb from Oracle gives some more
information:
[https://blogs.oracle.com/rajadurai/entry/sparc_m7_chip_32_co...](https://blogs.oracle.com/rajadurai/entry/sparc_m7_chip_32_cores)

~~~
listic
It's been almost 8 months since this blog post. How's it been since? Is the
CPU released already? (whatever that means for that kind of decidedly non-
consumer-grade hardware)

EDIT: The CPU is 'scheduled to be available sometime in calendar year 2015'
according to
[http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-m7/index.h...](http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-m7/index.html)
So, barring rumors and insider information, I gest this is it.

------
DiabloD3
What I want: 64 or more lanes of PCI-E 3.0, 4 or more channels of DDR3-1866 or
DDR4-2133 or faster... combined into a chip with few but very fast cores.

My closest option? E5v3-1620 or 1630. It'd be nice if someone started
producing non-x86 options for that.

~~~
rwmj
The interesting thing about ARMv8 is that if there's a niche of users with
your problem, someone can go ahead and make a SoC. They don't have to ask
permission from anyone, just pay the license fees. If you wanted an x86-based
SoC, there's no way Intel would make it.

Discussions about ARM vs x86 tend to miss this point. They tend to get stuck
on performance or software or process size, missing that the revolutionary
thing is the licensing.

[To head off some replies: 64 bit ARMv8 has fast single-thread performance,
unlike 32 bit ARMv7]

~~~
userbinator
_If you wanted an x86-based SoC, there 's no way Intel would make it._

Intel has made several x86 SoCs, and there's also a few others:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_x86_manufacturers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_x86_manufacturers)

This one in particular is interesting since it contains most of a standard PC:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex86](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex86)

However the current market for x86 SoCs is in industrial/embedded where
performance is not a main concern, so these are not particularly fast.

~~~
MBCook
I think they meant 'if you have a custom requirement Intel won't make it, you
can only choose between predefined options' as opposed to ARM or others where
people will build custom configurations of cores and modules for you.

------
neilmovva
Man, even at 20nm, the die size must be a bear. Especially the L3$... I know
TSMC has a ~600mm^2 max (for remotely reasonable yields), even on the highly
mature 28nm process. Thus, I doubt this would be a viable chip for deployment
today, rather a proof of concept. Need more details to be sure though.

~~~
wmf
Cache is repairable and bad cores can be disabled, so yield might not be too
bad. I doubt Oracle is concerned about cost, though.

------
apaprocki
I'll probably get to play with some of these at some point and hope they can
make the systems I use a bit faster. The T5s don't cut it against equivalent
code running on IBM chips. It's unfortunate, because Solaris is a decent OS.

~~~
kjs3
Oh...AIX isn't the worst thing in the world if you don't try and pretend it's
going to be Unix like you want Unix to be and do things the AIX way. In
return, Power8 does crush T5 for most things.

If only we'd make a Power 7 or 8 workstation...

~~~
apaprocki
Sadly even if the only "unix" thing you want to do is compile a bunch of
standard open source packages, you're in for a world of hurt. Need to use xlc
on top of that? Better have your seppuku knife ready. At least IBM took our
"suggestion" and now maintains modern gdb so at least you aren't stuck with
quirky dbx tracking down issues.

There's still some bizarre stuff though. You can set separate text/data page
sizes via env variables that differ from the system wide settings. Take a
guess which override, if either, will be reported through POSIX calls?
Neither! Fun when someone changes how they invoke your app. Just an example...

~~~
kjs3
Many open source packages don't compile out of the box? Like on many of them
don't on *BSD? Dbx, the debugger many of us have been using successfully for
the last 2 decades, is "quirky", but gdb isn't? You can tweak weird things in
opaque ways? Compilers have differences?

AIX is not Linux, so you don't like it. Exactly my point. If these are your
use cases, use Linux; don't bitch about AIX because it isn't. You can even use
Power blissfully without ever having to use AIX. But then we'd have to hear
about Power sucking when a linux developer baked the assumption that Linux ==
Intel ISA into some "standard" open source packages.

~~~
apaprocki
I use AIX and Solaris pretty much all the time. The pain incurred from
building open-source code on Solaris is nothing compared to getting things to
work properly on AIX. The dbx quirks on AIX I run into are issues with it not
even supporting the code output by IBM's own compiler because the team
building AIX is completely separate from the compiler team in Toronto, which
is again completely separate from the team that owns dbx. You can imagine what
kind of issues you run into when the compiler team implements features that
the debugger team has not considered.

~~~
kjs3
You _keep_ missing the point. If your use case is running open source code
bases, then _don 't use AIX_. No shit it sucks, since the vast majority of
open source developers probably haven't even seen an AIX login screen before,
much less made any effort to make their projects seamlessly build under it.
Hell, most of them don't even try to make it work under BSD/Solaris. You're
using the classic "Ferrari sucks because it isn't build to haul a boat behind
it" false argument. Use AIX for DB2, SAP, Tivoli, etc. Big stuff that is
actually targeted for AIX.

And, BTW...last time I checked, the people doing the Linux kernel were
different than the people doing GCC who are different than the people doing
GDB. I don't disagree that the AIX ecosystem is generally more dysfunctional,
but the mere presence of separation is yet another straw man. Linus has had
some less than flattering things to say about what GCC has been up to in the
last year or so.

------
nullc
Does it come with a free spurious patent infringement lawsuit over replicating
the API of software its vendor previously released under the GPL?

