IEEE Spectrum about Rock

The current issue of the IEEE Spectrum features an interesting article about the upcoming Rock processor and why it is a gem for Oracle: Sun's Rock CPU Could Be a Gem for Oracle:

For a company like Oracle seeking to boost its database software´s performance - and with the number of cores per CPU and therefore the number of simultaneously executing threads expected to grow - the importance of TM should not be overlooked, says J. Bruce Daley, founder of the software testing company Test Common, in Denver, Colo.

and

'Sun's ahead, for now,' Lea says.

It is so obvious why a developer of databases may be interested in such technologies like Transactional Memory. It´s so obvious, that i´m really wondering how someone could have the idea, that Oracle kills of hardware developments after a possible future takeover of Sun. Oracle needs technolgies that multicore processors don´t sit in locks while waiting for other processes. Any technology reducing the impact of locking will be especially helpful for databases executing a large amount of transactions at the same time, the main area of business for Oracle.