From PC World: Oracle is looking to expand the market for its Sparc-based servers with a new, low-cost processor dubbed Sonoma that its engineers will discuss publically for the first time later this month.
The company isn’t saying yet when the chip will be available, but if it delivers as advertised it could become a new rival for Intel’s Xeon chips and make Oracle’s servers more competitive with those from Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
Sonoma will allow Oracle to introduce Sparc-based servers at significantly lower price points than it offers today, allowing companies to use them for smaller, less critical applications, said John Fowler, head of Oracle’s systems division, in an interview Wednesday.
It’s been a couple of years since Oracle refreshed its Sparc line-up, and Sonoma is one of a few new chips it has in the works. Oracle is expected to soon deliver an update to the Sparc T5, used in the bulk of its mid-range systems, as well as the high-end Sparc M7.
Moving forward, Oracle will downplay traditional measures of chip performance like core count, cache size and clock speed, and instead emphasize the additional functionality it integrates into the silicon, Fowler said.
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