Rob Smyth's Blog

Anybody reading Steve Chan's apps tech blog will be aware that processor speed and memory are two key factors in determining how your applications will run. Most people in IT will also be aware of Moore's Law on increasing chip speeds. For gadget-geeks like myself, a brief interlude in the world of gadgets at gizmodo.com (other gadget websites are available) is also a nice lunch break pastime.

And today, bringing together three of my favourite topics, gizmodo has posted some pretty nice graphics on the Intel chip set!

In the beginning, 1971:
108KHz and 2,300 transistors

A very good year (the year I joined Oracle), 1995:
200MHz and 5.5M transistors

Present day, 2007:
>3GHz, 820M transistors

And all this so that we can show Gannt charts over the Web ;-)

Now to the interesting bit,

In Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 the minimum processor speed is 350MHz with 1.4GHz recommended.

This means that we run on any chip from 1999 onwards!

For details of what affects performance please see this White Paper