Oracle just made its biggest Sparc announcement since buying Sun

The M7 is the first Sparc processor designed from the ground up by Oracle

When Oracle bought Sun Microsystems five years ago, Larry Ellison made a lot of noise about how owning the entire systems stack, from applications to silicon, would allow him to do unique things with Oracle's servers. After five years of bluster and hype, he may finally have delivered -- but will customers buy what he's selling?

Oracle is announcing a new line of servers at OpenWorld on Monday based on a new Sparc processor called the M7. It has the usual improvements you'd expect in a new chip -- more cores, bigger caches, higher bandwidth -- but more interesting are software functions Oracle has embedded into the silicon to improve the performance and security of applications.

They include a memory protection technology that could provide a new level of security for in-memory databases, and an acceleration engine that allows data to be decompressed in near-real time for analytics, allowing for wider use of compressed data.

"Both of those are very interesting, because they're features I don't think a company that makes just chips -- that didn't have the software guys working with them -- would have invented," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64.

With each new processor Oracle has released, he says, he asked the company what new features it was able to include as a result of owning both the silicon and software. "Invariably they would say, well, you know, it takes time to do that, we don't really have anything yet," he said. "But with the M7, they do."

It's also the first new Sparc processor core designed entirely in-house by Oracle. It takes four to six years to design a new microprocessor, and it's been that long since Oracle bought Sun. "This is the first project that has Larry's fingerprints all over it," said Marshall Choy, Oracle senior director for Optimized Solutions.

The M7 will go on sale Monday in new models of Oracle's T- and M-series servers, as well as an upgrade to the Oracle Supercluster, a pre-configured system for running the Oracle database.

The memory protection technology, dubbed "silicon-secured memory," prevents malicious programs from accessing parts of main memory that they're not supposed to -- thwarting a common attack method for hackers.

When an application needs a new chunk of memory, the M7 creates a unique "color bit," or key, which ensures the application can access only the portion of memory assigned to it. When the application process ends, the key expires and a new one is created for the next memory allocation.

"That's how we can prevent a piece of malware from accessing a memory segment it's not authorized to, because it will do that color code checking and abort the program if it doesn't match," Choy said.

The feature is significant because customers are putting larger amounts of data in memory for analytics, where it's more to vulnerable to attack. The secured memory technology will be available to any application that runs on the M7 systems, Choy said, not just those from Oracle. It can also uncover low-level bugs in software because it exposes any problems with memory allocation, he said.

For decompression, the accelerator in the chip runs at the full speed of Oracle's in-memory database, meaning customers can use compressed data for in-memory computing without the performance overhead they would normally incur.

Oracle is offering the M7 chip both in its T-series servers, used for scale-out configurations, and in its M-series servers, which scale up to form big SMP boxes. It's the first time Oracle will use the same processor across both product lines. "We literally have one chip," Choy said. "We have exactly one part number for the M7."

The processor has 32 cores, up from 12 in the M6, and a clock speed that tops out 15 percent faster, at 4.1GHz. It has four times the cache per core as its predecessor, and doubles memory bandwidth.

Oracle claims its new servers run common benchmarks like SpecJ with full encryption and still best those of rivals like IBM. Real world performance will depend on a lot of customer-specific variables, but the M7 looks like a powerful chip.

The T series servers are offered with one, two and four processor sockets, and the M series servers with eight to 16 sockets. That's fewer than the 32-socket configurations supported by the M6, but Oracle apparently wasn't seeing a lot of demand for the biggest configurations. "We think 16-way will be very sufficient," Choy said.

The new servers also allow for live migration of virtual machines while encrypted, for tasks like disaster recovery or planned maintenance.

"If you have a rogue employee who puts a packet sniffer on the network, or malware that's able to commandeer VMs in transit, you'll get nothing back in terms of usable data," he said.

Oracle needs the new capabilities if it's going to win new customers for its hardware, at a time when the Unix market overall is declining and customers are putting more workloads into the cloud.

"The biggest challenge Oracle is facing is that it's still an uphill battle to get people who aren't already using Sparc and Solaris to move onto anything that isn't broadly industry standard," Brookwood said.

But Ellison has shown shown a continued willingness to invest in Sparc.

"He has the resources to keep this going as long as he wants, and that's important," Brookwood said. "It's a luxury Sun never had."

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The 33 worst lines ever said by tech recruiters

Tech recruiters say the darndest things. How many of these cringeworthy pronouncements have you heard?

Everyone loves to talk about terrible pickup lines from the world of romance, but there's a far worse kind of misguided enticement going on right here in the realm of technology. I'm talking about the delicate dance of tech recruitment -- if you work in any area of IT, you probably know precisely what I mean.

The men and women tasked with recruiting tech talent go to great lengths to attract the attention of their targets -- (often unsuspecting) tech pros viewed as valuable "gets." While some recruiters prove to be invaluable in improving your career, finding exactly the right words to pique your interest in a new gig, far more seem to stammer, stumble, and elicit exasperated sighs.

You don't have to take my word for it. Several brave tech workers from around the globe have taken the time to share their favorite (if you can call them that) tech recruiter horror tales, and we have highlights for you here.

From game- and/or world-changing concepts to oh-so-disruptive innovation, some tech recruiters resort to impressive-sounding catchphrases that don't actually mean anything. It's hard not to wonder how many of these cliché-inclined recruiters are relying on buzzword-generating algorithms to come up with their pitches. (Yes, such things do exist!)

I mean, really: For the love of vertical integration, can't someone think out of the box?

1. "We need someone who is bright and passionate. Our product is one of a kind and slated to be a total game changer."

2. "We are serious about changing the world."

3. "We need people who think so far out of the box that the box isn't even in the picture anymore."

4. "This will give you great exposure to big data in the cloud, and you will be working with some extremely intelligent technologists!"

5. "As a company that specializes in innovation, [we] want the best and brightest creative visionaries."

6. "I am working with the founders of a stealth mode startup disrupting the infrastructure/data center space."

7. "We are working on absolutely amazing things and will scale tremendously."

8. "We have a tight-knit dynamic team that is responsible for delivering consumer experiences."

9. "We're looking for a code ninja..."

10. "We're looking for a Java wizard..."

11. "We're looking for someone truly brilliant, and so we're willing to offer a lot:

12. "Want to work with a team of diverse rock stars?"

13. "Would it help if I told you that I was helping out with ninja engineer hiring for Facebook?"

14. "Chuck Norris coding skills required."

15. "EliteCoder you = new EliteCoder("Can you code with the best?");"

16. "The company is the first of its kind, as it is 100 percent focused on the integration of mobile/wearables and enterprise."

17. "Think of it as Box.com meets LinkedIn meets Facebook with real privacy."

18. "Our product combines many elements of Facebook, eBay, Blogger, PayPal, and Etsy."

19. "This is a ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY."

20. "We're building a dynamic team that lives on the bleeding edge of technology with a unique opportunity to work on the Silverlight platform. Prior experience with Adobe Flash highly desired."

21. "The best way to negotiate is not to negotiate at all ... so tell me exactly what you're making."

22. "What we can offer:

23. "The environment is hip and modern, and very inclusive and friendly to women and other weirder types."

24. "You have JavaScript on your resume. What do you mean you don't know Java?"

25. "[This job requires] experience of developing databases in HTML."

26. "[Looking for a] senior iOS architect with 10-plus years experience." (The first version of iOS was released in 2007.)

27. "What's the difference between a UI engineer and a Unix engineer?" (Posed to an IT employee by a recruiter hired to find engineers and programmers.)

28. "We are very impressed with all your Android work at [Company X] and we believe you would be a perfect fit for this great opportunity." (Sent to someone after his first day as a Company X employee.)

29. "What a beautiful morning, what a beautiful day! ... I am looking for people who don't follow roads, the Docs of the world. The people who take life and grab it, regardless of any paths or roads that have been set. We spend a lifetime of thinking 'what if'? But what if we spent a lifetime of 'I did!'"

30. "You'll be empowered to identify problems and dive head first into the equation. Risk is encouraged. Victory makes us who we are."

31. "I don't mean to be a nuisance, but there's really no way of knowing if someone might be interested or not without a response."

32. "I came across your profile and was very impressed by your pedigree."

33. "Due to the high volume of applicants, only shortlisted candidates will be shortlisted."

Well, that certainly clears things up. No word yet, however, on whether said shortlist could include any "women or other weirder types."

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Review: Apple shines up OS X with 'El Capitan'

In Mac OS X 10.11, most of the improvements are under the hood

Apple's new Macintosh operating system, OS X 10.11 "El Capitan," is named after a prominent rock formation in Yosemite National Park. That's fitting because the new OS is designed with rock-solid stability in mind. El Capitan is the 12th iteration of the OS powering Apple’s desktop computer lineup, and as the name implies, it on the shoulders of its predecessor.

Just as iOS 9 was built on the foundation laid by iOS 8 for mobile devices, El Capitan improves on the many changes introduced in 2014's Yosemite -- which included new features such as Continuity and a smarter Spotlight search tool. El Capitan adds more polish than features, though there are quite a few of those to explore, as well.

Among the changes made to apps and sprinkled throughout the operating system are better security and a move to Apple's Metal graphics technology (which debuted in iOS) for the system and apps. (Metal replaces OpenGL.) El Capitan also cements in place the adoption of Apple's home-grown programming language, Swift, which allows developers to write apps with smaller latency and more efficient performance.

Like other recent OS X releases, El Capitan is a free download from the App Store. The system requirements are 2GB of RAM and 8GB of available storage. El Capitan will run on Macs that date as far back as mid-2007. (If you're still using a Mac from 2007, though, you should really look into upgrading your hard drive to an SSD for more 2015-like performance.)

But while older Macs can run El Capitan, those systems can't take advantage of all of its features. For instance, although El Capitan is designed to take advantage of both the CPU and the GPU for processing power, only Macs with modern graphics cards -- basically, those released since 2012 -- will be able to utilize this feature. (More on this below.)

Metal and Swift
The addition of Apple's Metal graphics technology is good news for gamers and other users. Metal is a set of application program interfaces (APIs) designed to supplant OpenGL. The Metal API is actually an Apple-designed combination of OpenGL and OpenCL, which debuted last year in iOS 8. (OpenCL is used to take advantage of every processor on a computer, CPU and graphics card included.)

Metal was designed for efficiency -- a requirement for mobile devices that need long battery life -- and is a much lighter API for graphics compared to OpenGL, letting the graphics card be used more effectively and freeing up the CPU for other tasks. For desktops and laptops, Apple rewrote OS X system software (like the Graphics stack) to take advantage of Metal, resulting in a 50% improvement in rendering performance system-wide and 40% better efficiency (the latter will help laptop users by prolonging battery-charge life).

Apple boasts that El Capitan is 1.4 times faster than previous OS X versions for app launching, twice as fast at switching apps and four times faster at opening PDFs. At the same time, Apple claims a 70% reduction in CPU usage compared to apps written using OpenGL.

Adobe representatives on stage during Apple's September 9th event claimed an eight-fold improvement in using the Adobe After Effects graphics software. Users should find that their systems are more responsive with smoother animations and faster application launches. There is also the promise of future improvements for games and other apps; however, those games and apps must first be rewritten to take advantage of Metal.

Another under-the-hood technology available to developers is Swift 2.0, which is designed to simplify coding (relatively speaking) while making it easy for OS X software to take advantage of the built-in hardware -- such as using the graphics card for data processing when possible. I'm not a programmer, but anything that allows developers to streamline their software is a good thing.

Not everything in El Capitan is behind the scenes and waiting for developers. There are some user-facing features as well.

The first thing astute users may notice is that El Capitan uses a new system font: San Francisco. This font is designed to make text more legible for Apple's high-definition Retina displays. It works as intended, but the difference will probably be overlooked by any but the most fastidious font fanatics.

OS X gets a new enhanced-for-Retina system font: San Francisco.
The updated Finder builds on Yosemite's improvements by applying a new split-screen app mode in addition to the full-screen mode that debuted in Yosemite. The split-screen mode can be enabled in a couple of ways. First, you can drag a Finder window to the top of the menu bar and then drop that window on an existing full-screen app space in Mission Control. Or you can press and hold the green button on an app window -- doing so will make that app fill up half the screen and any open windows display in miniature, letting you select one to fill the other side of the screen.

A clear divider separates the two apps, and each operates independently. The divider can be dragged from side to side to adjust each app's window size. The menu bar at the top of the display automatically changes to accommodate the front-most app, which is normal app behavior Mac users are accustomed to.

It's an elegant solution, one I like a lot, but it's not necessarily obvious to new users. Of course, it's also very similar to Microsoft's implementation in Windows 10.

Managing windows via Mission Control also received attention in El Capitan. Any window dragged to the title bar will activate Mission Control, which lets you move apps to different virtual desktops. Dragging an app window into any existing Space automatically places the window there; dragging the window into a Dpace occupied by a full screen app activates a split-screen view; and dragging a window to the upper right of the display creates a new Space with that window in it.

Spotlight, now with more Siri
Spotlight receives some really useful upgrades in El Capitan. Yes, you can move around the search field and results window; they're no longer locked in place at the center of your display. There's also added functionality in search results: Spotlight can check sports data (such as information about favorite athletes or scores, team schedules and standings); it can check weather conditions and forecasts; and when you search for a company's ticker symbol, it can look up stock prices.

The biggest improvement comes in the form of queries, similar to the ones you can ask Siri on iOS. Spotlight now supports natural language search, which generally means Spotlight is as useful as Siri, even though the searches have to be manually typed rather than spoken aloud as you would with an iPhone.

At the iPhone 6S launch event, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, demonstrated this function by typing a search for emails from Phil Schiller that had been ignored. The search results showed unread messages from Schiller. I've used Spotlight to search for documents and videos created during certain time periods, as well as to search for New England Patriot game scores and standings.

There is one minor caveat: When you type a Spotlight search query, you can't press Enter; you have to wait for the results to display after you finish typing them in, even if that takes a while. While this is taking place, there's no obvious indicator that a search is in progress. It's a little annoying, because many users will be inclined to press the Enter key to make sure a search is in progress. That effectively selects the first result and closes the Spotlight search window. That could result in, say, an app launch you didn't intend. Big deal? No. Annoying? Usually.

For developers, Apple has designed a new API that can display search results of in-app content, which means better search results when developers incorporate this feature in their apps.
Apple app changes

Safari gets a number of useful additions this year, but they're mostly tweaks, such as pinned sites, audio muting and -- Apple TV users will welcome this -- built-in AirPlay support for videos.

About that last feature: Videos will now get an additional control icon; tapping the AirPlay icon lets you choose any Apple TV in range so that the video plays through it instead of in the browser window. Previously, this was only possible via third-party plugins, such as ClickToFlash.

While the built-in functionality lacks advanced features found in third-party plugins (ClickToFlash lets you download content instead of simply playing it, for instance), Apple's addition to Safari is stable and works well enough for most people who just want a no-fuss way to stream content to Apple TV. Safari also supports HTML 5 picture-in-picture to enable custom controls for HTML 5 videos and streaming of FairPlay content.

Pinned Sites, which keeps a small, active tab of any website you wish to keep in the Tab section of the app, just to the left; these tabs stay open, yet out of the way, for quick access to frequently visited sites.

A load-blocking API for extensions, which lets Web developers block content from loading from a large collection of sources, using minimal resources without hindering Safari performance -- and perhaps actually improving it.

Force Touch mouse events support, which will enable developers to add interactivity based on the amount of pressure exerted in a tap on supported laptops, as well as haptic feedback.
And better audio/video content control: You can now easily silence sudden audio/video from a background or foreground tab, such as when a video or ad loads that you didn't really want to play/hear. From within the Web address bar, clicking on the speaker icon will instantly mute all Safari content. Then Safari will show you which tab has the offending content when you click and hold on that speaker icon. Super simple and super useful.

Mail snags a feature from iOS by gaining more gesture support in the Mail list; the gestures perform different behaviors, depending on whether you swipe left or right with two fingers. These gestures can trigger events like deleting, flagging or marking mail as read (without actually opening the message).

Mail also fixes a problem inherent to full-screen apps that require multiple windows. In Yosemite, when a new message was created while Mail was running in full-screen mode, it wasn't possible to view other messages; they resided in the main window behind the message being composed. In El Capitan, it's now possible to minimize the message window and access other emails and mailboxes; and if you're writing more than one email, they show up in tabs, similar to tabs in the Safari browser.

While iOS 9 offers improvements aimed at predicting what a user will do or what information will be needed, there are now aspects of Mail in El Capitan that offer this, too. For instance, data detectors have been improved, offering suggestions at the top of an email body when they detect phrases in a message that could yield calendar entries, like "Let's go out for dinner at five." This is called suggested events; the same proactive behavior also accounts for potential contacts.

Notes
Notes has been updated to bring feature parity with its iOS 9 counterpart, including instant checklist creation, support for inline video and images, and URL snippets with preview. There's a new button that triggers an Attachments view, which organizes attachments from across all of your notes into one area, split into categories like Photos & Video, Sketches, Map Locations, Websites, Audio and Documents.

All of the new Notes features are accessible via the app's toolbar. And beyond the Notes app itself, there is now an extension in the Share button of supported apps that lets you add content from within that app to a new or existing note. Of course, any addition, subtraction or modification to your notes is synced across every device signed in with that Apple ID.

Maps
Like Notes, Maps has been improved in El Capitan to create functional parity with iOS 9. Specifically, you can plan routes using public transportation with Transit view, which supports walking directions as well as subway, train, ferry and bus information. Like iOS 9's Maps, Transit data has been surveyed so that Maps shows you the most efficient routes, exits and drop off stops to get to where you're going. As before, you can send those directions to the iPhone from your Mac.

Security
Behind the scenes improvements include security additions, with the most important one in El Capitan called System Integrity Protection (SIP). At its core, System Integrity Protection is a security policy that is applied to every running process. This process protects system files and only allows modifications from the system's installer app and software updates. Code injection and runtime attachments to system binaries are no longer permitted.

What this basically means is that SIP does not allow unauthorized manipulation of important system files, which should help prevent security breaches.

Bottom line
There's a wealth of new features in El Capitan that seem minor -- until you need them. (You can, for instance, find a lost cursor on the screen by shaking your mouse back and forth rapidly, and you'll be able to eventually download extensions to the Photos app for manipulating your images.)

These may not be ground-breaking changes to apps and the operating system, but this collection of small additions makes using El Capitan a little faster, smoother, easier and better. And the under-the-hood technologies lay the groundwork for richer apps down the road. It's these usability iterations found throughout El Capitan that make the biggest difference.

As with any major software upgrade, make sure your apps are supported before moving to El Capitan. If you're hesitant about upgrading, it isn't a bad idea to hold off a while and see if any major bugs are discovered. But because this version was vetted throughout the summer with a public beta program, I'm not expecting any showstoppers now that the final version has arrived.

In a nutshell: El Capitan does what it is designed to -- streamline OS X across the board, making it more efficient to run and flat-out easier to use. It's free, it runs well and I recommend it.

Installation advice
If you've decided to take the OS X 10.11 plunge, make sure to back up your system before upgrading. Apple's built-in Time Machine feature works well -- all you have to do to turn it on in System Preferences and plug in an external hard drive; the Mac will automatically ask if you want to use it to start a backup. (Alternatively, there are other third-party utilities like SuperDuper that offer more control if you're more technically minded.)

This is also a good time to run a diagnostic on your Mac's file system. To do this, restart your computer holding down the Command and R keys at startup and then use Disk Utility to check for unseen problems. You can also use Alsoft's DiskWarrior, a much better third-party alternative. My feeling is that DiskWarrior is the rare piece of software that should be in everyone's arsenal, regardless of experience level.

OS X 10.11 installer
Once backups and diagnostics are out of the way, El Capitan can be obtained from the Mac App Store and will download to your Applications folder. To manually install it, double-click the installer icon, enter your username and password and select your target destination. The installer does the rest.

Here's an important point: If you have more than one Mac in your home and/or limited bandwidth for downloads, you can use the same installer on multiple machines. Copy the file from the Applications folder to another Mac via AirDrop in a Finder window or transfer it to an external disk. Just sure to do this before running the El Capitan installer. If you don't, when the installation is complete, the Installer will delete itself.

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