The new T7 SPARC single socket servers are now out . The new addition is the T7-1 which might be thought of as the spiritual successor to the older T4-1 which has recently been made end of life. There never was a T5-1, Oracle chose to offer a T5-2 with the 2nd CPU removed instead.

The T7-1 has a single 32-Core 4.13GHz CPU but there are only 16 DIMM slots so memory is maxed out at 512GB. The T7-2 like the T5-2 is also limited to 1TB of memory but you are getting two 32-core CPU’s instead of two 16-core. So if it is memory you want and don’t need a heap of CPU’s the T5-2 may be the way to go for a while, it will be very much dearer to go T7-2 for now. The T7-1 is coming in around the cost of a single CPU T5-2 so that is reasonable value for the CPU hike.

There are all round general improvements for the T7 range, faster memory, PCIe 3.0 bus, NVMe flash drive support and software in silicon enhancements. Note that these enhancements often require a software option to work. E.g –In-Memory Query Acceleration and In-Line Decompression available with Oracle Database In-Memory Database option.

Solaris 11.3 or later is required for all T7/M7 Servers. Minimum configuration T7-1 (32 CPU/128GB mem, two 600GB disk) start at a list price of ~ €39K delivered.