Oracle's Sparc M8 is 'twice as speedy' as Intel's x86

Oracle yesterday announced its eighth Sparc platform, saying it will offer higher levels of security and performance for its customers running critical workloads.

Powered by Oracle's Sparc M8 microprocessor, the tech giant added that it can process online transactions twice as fast as Intel's x86 infrastructure, and 1.4 times faster than the Sparc M7.

With its own virtualisation platform and management for private cloud environments, Oracle added that the M8 platform offers the flexibility businesses require.

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Security also got an upgrade, with encryption twice as fast compared to its predecessor, as is hashing.

Java set-ups will see similar improvements, the firm claimed.

For in-memory analytics, businesses can expect more substantial improvements - up to seven times as many queries per minute compared to using x86 for database analytics.

"Oracle has long been a pioneer in engineering software and hardware together to secure high-performance infrastructure for any workload of any size," said Edward Screven, chief corporate architect at Oracle. "Sparc was already the fastest, most secure processor in the world for running Oracle Database and Java. Sparc M8 extends that lead even further."

Oracle added that its Oracle Cloud Sparc Dedicated Compute service will also be updated with the Sparc M8 processor.

Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.