Oracle Unleashes New Innovations in Data Analytics With Free and Open Interfaces to On-Chip Accelerators

REDWOOD SHORES, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 8, 2016) - Empowering developers to build the next generation of big data analytics platforms, Oracle released a free and open API and developer kit for its Data Analytics Accelerator (DAX) in SPARC processors through its Software in Silicon Developer Program. The program also lets developers view sample use cases and program code, and to test and validate how DAX can speed up analytics applications while test driving Software in Silicon Technology.

"High performance data analytics are critical to a range of key use cases like click stream data, social media sentiment, buying behavior, and more," said John Fowler, Executive Vice President of Systems, Oracle. "Through our Software in Silicon Developer Program, developers can now apply our DAX technology to a broad spectrum of previously unsolvable challenges in the analytics space because we have integrated data analytics acceleration into processors, enabling unprecedented data scan rates of up to 170 billion rows per second."

With the release of the 32-core, 256 thread SPARC M7 processor, Oracle created a number of Software in Silicon features by building in higher-level software functions into processor design. One of the most exciting new capabilities introduced in the SPARC M7 processor as part of the Software in Silicon innovations in SPARC M7 is DAX, which delivers unprecedented analytics efficiency.

Data Analytics Accelerator on SPARC M7
DAX adds processing capability that can run selective functionality -- Scan, Extract, Select and Translate -- at incredibly fast speeds. The SPARC M7 DAX accelerates these analytics primitives on a dedicated physical unit separate from the standard compute cores.

Initial software development enabled DAX for Oracle Database 12c, and all the applications above it. This extends analytics acceleration to all Oracle, ISV, and customer applications.

Large scale scan and filter operations are made trivial by transparent use of 32 dedicated DAX co-processors in the SPARC microprocessor which operate at memory bus speeds of up to 160 GB/s between cache and DRAM. These accelerators, implemented for the first time on-chip for the highest level of performance and efficiency, can now be used by developers through APIs in Oracle Solaris 11, and applied to a variety of use cases.