Why is it Important for Hardware and Software Teams to Work Closely Together?

Even with revolutionary hardware technology, close collaboration with firmware and software is required in order to deliver the full capabilities of a modern server. Fujitsu M10 server hardware, firmware, and software developers work closely together as a team to deliver strong product value. Their efforts to develop high performance, highly flexible, and highly available servers continue.

Developing Virtualization Technologies that Enhance the Value of Oracle Solaris

Oracle Solaris itself has many advantages, including: binary compatibility, long-term support, stable operation under high load, included no-cost virtualization functions, etc. Fujitsu hardware, software and firmware development teams collaborate in many areas with a focus on delivering a server product line specifically designed to provide linear performance improvement as the server hardware scales from small to huge. With Fujitsu M10 servers, the collaboration between hardware, software and firmware is advanced in order to create new value for our customers.

The Fujitsu M10 Software on Chip features is a good example of the success of strong collaboration. Software on Chip is a collection of technologies that accelerate the processing speed of specific processes previously handled by software. This is done by implementing specialized logic directly in the processor itself. Implementing these functions required support from the processor, operating system, and Oracle Database development teams.

Fujitsu's processor development teams have full knowledge of how instructions are effectively executed to make software run faster, and collaborate closely with our operating system development teams. Through discussion and close collaboration with Oracle developers, Oracle Database 12c has been optimized for our decimal floating-point arithmetic processing function with support for Oracle Number.
The result of this collaborative effort is significant database performance improvements from the combination of Fujitsu M10 Software on Chip, Oracle Solaris 11, and Oracle Database 12c. We achieved further performance improvements with Oracle Database In-Memory (STEP3 in the diagram above).
Fujitsu derives strength, and ultimately results, from the close and face-to-face collaboration of hardware and software developers. In addition, having Fujitsu developers located close to Oracle is important for improving database performance. The presence of the Fujitsu Silicon Valley Campus is extremely beneficial. Of course with today's technology we can communicate and have meetings remotely, but face-to-face collaboration can achieve faster and better results through rapid feedback and deeper understanding of each other.

Another example of collaboration between hardware and software is virtualization, specifically Oracle VM. Previous SPARC Enterprise M-series servers had two types of virtualization functions: hardware partitioning and Oracle Solaris Zones. With Fujitsu M10, Oracle VM has been added for even more flexibility, allowing higher utilization rates and cost-saving server consolidation. Oracle VM is a firmware-level virtualization function developed by Oracle and first implemented on SPARC T-series servers. Fujitsu collaborated with Oracle in order to support this function on Fujitsu M10. Multiple domains (each a separate Oracle Solaris environment) can be created on one chassis, and different versions of Solaris can be mixed. Despite a short development period, we successfully added functions to Oracle VM that were requested by our customers and not available on other servers. Such functions include core auto-replacement, hypervisor dump collection, and prioritized shutdown.

The ability of Fujitsu engineers to develop high quality software in a short timeframe was favorably received at Oracle, and our contributions have been welcomed as valuable enhancements to Oracle Solaris and Oracle VM.

Fujitsu-Quality Maintained for Complex Virtualized Systems

Implementation of DR requires close cooperation between firmware and hardware development teams. For instance, when deleting memory, if data remains in processor cache memory, it can lead to conflicts in subsequent processing. Therefore, a process to synchronize the contents of memory that is subject for deletion with cache memory has been added.

Our processors have a function called "speculative execution" to improve processing speed. This is a mechanism to predict the next instructions and then execute them ahead of time. Put another way, these instructions are executed by processors before software gives the direction to do so. When deleting processors using DR, these scenarios are considered and appropriate measures are taken by firmware to avoid adverse impacts.

At Fujitsu, hardware development teams are located close to our firmware teams so we can more easily cooperate in implementing DR. This allows us to promptly provide high quality functions that competitors cannot easily match. It is likely that these functions could not have been implemented if other vendors' processors were used.

DR on Fujitsu M10 is used by many customers around the world with large-scale system configurations. Developers like me are proud to see our efforts being used broadly.

Aiming for Easy Operation and Management

For developers like me, experiencing the environment of innovation in Silicon Valley is just as exciting as playing Major League Baseball. Face-to-face discussions with excellent engineers from around the world and creating software modules was very demanding, but it was also an enjoyable assignment like nothing I had previously experienced.
Because the time allotted for development was short, finishing everything within the time limit was initially considered difficult. However, by utilizing the development skills and process management methods acquired in the development of other Fujitsu software, we were able to successfully complete Fujitsu M10 support in Ops Center. We attained excellent quality and also received acclaim from Oracle.

Before this product became publicly available, I had the opportunity to visit Kuwait to support the implementation of a customer's system. I helped with the installation and configuration of the operating system and Oracle VM, but I felt that if only Ops Center were available, I could create domains just by following the GUI screen to specify the number of CPUs and memory...
I believe that customers who consider Oracle VM commands difficult will appreciate the convenience of the GUI.

Nowadays, I have more opportunities to introduce Ops Center directly to our customers, show them the benefits and listen to their needs. Our joint development continues as we strive to make Oracle VM even more convenient with useful GUI functions.

Engineers of Fujitsu enthusiastically endeavor to develop innovative infrastructure to support our customers' business around the world with their technological capabilities acquired over years of server development and through further cooperation with Oracle.