An Oracle spokeswoman declined a request for comment on Oracle's Exadata plans.

Still, some industry observers have already begun speculating and piecing together clues about what upgraded machines will include.

Oracle database administrator Andy Colvin of a Web page inside Oracle's My Oracle Support portal that shows knowledge article listings referring to Exadata X-3 hardware in various configurations, including an "eighth rack" option.

"Seeing an eighth rack Exadata could be interesting -- possibly along the lines of the seldom-seen Exadata V2 basic system (One compute node, one storage server, one Infiniband switch)," Colvin wrote. "This would be a big sell for customers that want to give Exadata a try, or very small dev/test systems. Keep in mind that there isn't much redundancy in these systems, and the performance isn't quite as great as you'd see on a quarter rack."

Details of Oracle's plans for the specialized software that runs on Exadata along with Oracle's database have also surfaced. One attendee of a speech given last month by Oracle database chief Andy Mendelsohn of a slide displayed during the talk.