Oracle 19c available on ARM chits

• Oracle announced on 28th June 2023 that
  • Oracle 19c Database Enterprise Edition is now certified & available on ARM architecture
  • Available for both on-premise & cloud deployments
• On OCI
  • Customers can subscribe to Oracle Database Service on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) using Ampere® Altra® processor (OCI Ampere A1) compute instances
• Licensing Core Factor for ARM chips
  • There are two core factors: 1 and 0.25
  • The Ampere Altra/AltraMax and AmpereOne chips will have a core factor of 0.25
  • This makes the Ampere chips competitive to be used by customers running Oracle database
  • All other ARM chips have a core factor of 1.
  • ARM chips have single-threaded cores

Oracle Exadata moves to AMD

• Oracle announced on 22^nd June 2023
  • The availability of Exadata X10M
  • On Exadata X10M, Oracle has completely moved out from Intel to AMD for both on-premise & cloud service
  • Exadata X10M features fourth-generation AMD EPYC™ processors
  • 2 X 96 cores available on Exadata X10M
  • Oracle Linux KVM is the Hypervisor
• Why has Oracle chosen AMD for Exadata? Higher database revenue?
  • More cores per socket. This helps in better database performance
  • Higher database revenue – more cores translates to larger number of licenses.
• Licensing of Database on Exadata X10M
  • Capacity on Demand is available enabling scalable licensing
  • Core Factor of AMD EPYC processors is 0.5
  • A minimum of 2 X 14cores ( hence 14 Processor licenses)
  • For a fully utilized Exadata X10M with all processors consumed (or with Capacity on Demand inactive), 96 Processor licenses will be required.

(Note: Oracle had tested out AMD on Exadata in OCI with a partial implementation in the 9XM iteration. But it was still a trial. With 10XM, they have completely ditched Intel and moved to AMD)

Alma Linux on OCI

• Oracle announced 22^nd May 2022
  • Alma Linux available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
  • Almalinux OS Virtual Machines can be deployed on a Virtual Cloud Network
• Why is this announcement important today (June 2023)
  • The combination of multiple announcements make this important
    • Ampere is closely associated with Alma Linux
    • Ampere has been available on OCI since May 2022
    • Oracle 19c is now certified on Ampere servers

What is Oracle’s direction?

• Larry Ellison’s statements
  • The old Intel X86 architecture, after many decades in the market,is reaching its limit.
  • We’ve moved to a new architecture, and we’ve moved to new supplier.” (on Ampere’s ARM chips & servers)
• Oracle investment in Ampere
  • Oracle has invested close to $1bn in Ampere
  • Oracle would not have certified 19c on Ampere if it was not technically ready. Oracle’s 19c availability on Ampere shows its is enterprise ready.
• How does this affect Intel?
  • Intel has been losing share to AMD in the server market (see graphic)
  • Oracle’s move to AMD for Exadata will give it a major push for running Oracle workloads on other AMD based servers.
  • Oracle certification of 19c on Ampere and ARM architecture opens up a larger battle for Intel
  • Oracle is not the only company that has brought ARM into the server space. AWS, Google and Azure have also debuted ARM chips on their clouds.

(information for this article has been taken from blogs on Oracle website and various other public domain blogs. All trademarks belong to their respective owners)

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