Oracle is look to weaken the integer of core in its future Sparc processors and change meeting summit to its single-thread performance, which is a weak spot for the chip but is key to running large database and back-end application.

The 16 cores in the current Sparc T3 will be replaced by a minimized 8 core Sparc T4 according to the recent slide show at Oracle System Launch last week. However, both will be running the same eight compute threads per core.

Adding cores to boost concert has been long used as another to increasing clock speed by chipmakers. On its commence, the Sparc 3 had develop into the first 16 core server in the market.

The performance of chips with high core counts varies on the basis of their workloads. They perform better at jobs which can be broken into small parts like online transactions and processing of high volume of web requests. But they struggle with big databases and ERP applications, which count on single-thread performances.

The Sparc chip has been underperforming in this view time after point, as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison renowned at the occurrence previous week. According to him, the Sparc T4 is “crucial” for Oracle, as it “address the single-thread issue”.

At the OpenWorld meeting, Oracle partner Fujitsu presented an aim of improving the T4’s single-thread presentation by three era. Ellison additional that Oracle had already begun work on the T4 chips and will commence shipping the processors sometime next year.

The 16 core Sparc chip- formerly called ‘UltraSparc’ – had been positioned by SUN as primarily for “network facing tasks”. Oracle is positioning it as a general purpose processor. Ellison reiterated that the Sparc Supercluster Oracle is a “general purpose computer”.

The T4 is being marketed by Oracle as a more balanced processor, with both strong parallel performance and an ability to handle big single-thread workloads. Nathan Brookwood, analyst of Insight64, stressed on the fact that Oracle may want to have larger caches to support a balanced processor, and devoting more of the chip area for caches leaves less space for execution cores.

Oracle also manufactures high-end M series servers based on the Sparc64 VII + processor designed by Fujitsu. It is a variation of the underlying Sparc v9 architecture, and possesses some strong single-thread capabilities.

A Fujitsu Executive at the Oracle event announced the launch of a new Sparc64 VII+ which would double the cache size over the current chip and increase clock speeds to 3.0 Ghz. According to Brookwood, Oracle would be looking to standardize on a single Sparc implementation making it easier for developers to optimize code for both implementations, Sparc T and Sparc64. He reiterated that Oracle would look to focus on one core to deploy in both these highly parallel throughput type environments as also the higher-end environments.

Brookwood did predict that the future could see the cores in T4 being used by Sun for high end chips, as well as variations for the low end purposes. He pointed out that Intel uses a similar strategy for its Xeon processors. The Sparc T4 with fewer cores seems to be a conscious step in the direction of better single-thread performances.