As part of the Sparc SuperCluster rollout yesterday, Oracle chief exec officer Larry Ellison let slip that the future Sparc T4 chip was coming out next year. Oracle and Fujitsu also announced a revved up Sparc64-VII+ processor for the Sparc Enterprise M series of midrange and high-end SMP machines, but did not provide any details on future system and chip co-development between the two firms.
It is not entirely clear what the Sparc T4 chip is, but it looks to be a shrink of the current 16-core “Rainbow Falls” Sparc T3 processor, which is fabbed by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp using a 40 nanometer process and which debuted back in September.
Fear not good citizens. When electro-matic Android mechanisms invade your homes this year, they will not be in the form of MC Hammer simulacra that will stand over your children while you plead “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em!” Admittedly though, I think that will be more interesting than the actual plan of excitingly named, Touch Revolution, to deliver Android-powered household smart gadgets later this year.