Fujitsu and Oracle SPARC64 - The Same Chip Distinguished by the Interconnect?

Fujitsu recently reported on their exascale path for SPARC64, which is interesting for HPC but unclear about the enterprise. Meanwhile, Oracle announced details of their Sparc M7 processor. It is not clear if the Oracle and Fujutsu SPARC64 chips are essentially the same -with the exception of the Tofu 2 vs. Bixby interconnect. We know that the Tofu Interconnect is a proprietary six-dimensional torus interconnect used in the K computer. Presumably the Tofu 2 is just a faster version. Note a 6-dimensional Torus interconnect is optimized for 3D calculations, which represents an area of extreme HPC interest as exemplified by the announced $174M USD Trinity 42 PF/s machine. In contrast, the Bixby interconnect another proprietary interconnect is geared more towards enterprise applications (e.g. a 384-port interconnect, that has 3 TB/sec of bandwidth linking the system together in a 32-way setup).

For more information Timothy Prickett Morgan at EnterpriseTech just published a nice article about the Oracle Sparc M7, “Oracle Cranks Up The Cores To 32 With Sparc M7 Chip“: