BestPerf: Performance & Best Practices

Significance of Multiple World Records

The Sun Blade X6275 server module, equipped with two Intel QC Xeon X5570 2.93 GHz processors and running the OpenSolaris 2009.06 operating system delivered the best SPECfp2006 and SPECint2006 results to date.

• The Sun Blade X6275 server module using the Sun Studio 12 update 1 compiler and the OpenSolaris 2009.06 operating system delivered a World Record SPECfp2006 result of 50.8.

• This SPECfp2006 result beats the best result by the competition, using the same processor type, by 20%.
• The Sun Blade X6275 server module using the Sun Studio 12 update 1 compiler and the OpenSolaris 2009.06 operating system delivered a World Record SPECint2006 result of 37.4.

• This SPECint2006 result just tops the best result by the competition even though that result used the 9% faster clock W-series chip of the Nehalem family.

Sun(TM) Studio 12 Update 1 contains new features and enhancements to boost performance and simplify the creation of high-performance parallel applications for the latest multicore x86 and SPARC-based systems running on leading Linux platforms, the Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS) or OpenSolaris(TM). The Sun Studio 12 Update 1 software has set almost a dozen industry benchmark records to date, and in conjunction with the freely available community-based OpenSolaris 2009.06 OS, was instrumental in landing four new ground-breaking SPEC CPU2006 results.

Sun Studio 12 Update 1 includes improvements in the compiler's ability to automatically parallelise codes - afterall the easiest way to develop parallel applications is if the compiler can do it for you; improvements to the support of parallelisation specifications like OpenMP, this release includes support for the latest OpenMP 3.0 specification; and improvements in the tools and their ability to provide the developer meaningful feedback about parallel code, for example the ability of the Performance Analyzer to profile MPI code.

Performance Landscape

SPEC CPU2006 Performance Charts - bigger is better, selected results, please see www.spec.org for complete results.

SPECint2006

System	Processors				Performance Results		Notes (1)
	Type	GHz	Chips	Cores	Peak	Base
Sun Blade X6275	Xeon X5570	2.93	2	8	37.4	31.0	New Record
ASUS TS700-E6 (Z8PE-D12X)	Xeon W5580	3.2	2	8	37.3	33.2	Previous Best
Fujitsu R670	Xeon W5580	3.2	2	8	37.2	33.2
Sun Blade X6270	Xeon X5570	2.93	2	8	36.9	32.0
Fujitsu Celsius R570	Xeon X5570	2.93	2	8	36.3	32.2
YOYOtech MLK1610	Intel Core i7-965	3.73	1	4	36.0	32.5
HP ProLiant DL585 G5	Opteron 8393	3.1	1	1	23.4	19.7	Best Opteron
IBM System p570	POWER6	4.70	1	1	21.7	17.8	Best POWER6

(1) Results as of 22 June 2009 from www.spec.org and this report.

SPECfp2006

System	Processors				Performance Results		Notes (2)
	Type	GHz	Chips	Cores	Peak	Base
Sun Blade X6275	Xeon X5570	2.93	2	8	50.8	44.2	New Record
Sun Blade X6270	Xeon X5570	2.93	2	8	50.4	45.0	Previous Best
Sun Blade X4170	Xeon X5570	2.93	2	8	48.9	43.9
Fujitsu R670	Xeon W5580	3.2	2	8	42.2	39.5
HP ProLiant DL585 G5	Opteron 8393	3.1	2	8	25.9	23.6	Best Opteron
IBM Power 595	POWER6	5.00	1	1	24.9	20.1	Best POWER6

(2) Results as of 22 June 2009 from www.spec.org and this report.

Results and Configuration Summary

Hardware Configuration:

Sun Blade X6275

2 x 2.93 GHz QC Intel Xeon X5570 processors, turbo enabled
24 GB, (6 x 4GB DDR3-1333 DIMM)
1 x 146 GB, 10000 RPM SAS disk

Software Configuration:

O/S: OpenSolaris 2009.06
Compiler: Sun Studio 12 Update 1
Other SW: MicroQuill SmartHeap Library 9.01 x64
Benchmark: SPEC CPU2006 V1.1

Key Points and Best Practices

These results show that choosing the right compiler for the job can maximize one's investment in hardware. The Sun Studio compiler teamed with the OpenSolaris operating system allows one to tackle hard problems to get quick solution turnaround.

• Autoparallelism was used to deliver the maximum time to solution. These results show that autoparallel compilation is a very viable compilation option that should be considered when one needs the quickest turnaround of results. Note that not all codes benefit from this optimization, just like they can't always take advantage of other compiler optimization techniques.
• OpenSolaris 2009.06 was able to fully take advantage of the turbo mode of the Nehalem family of processors.

Disclosure Statement

SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 6/22/2009. Sun Blade X6275 (Intel X5570, 2 chips, 8 cores) 50.8 SPECfp2006, 37.4 SPECint2006; ASUS TS700-E6 (Intel W5570, 2 chips, 8 cores) 37.3 SPECint2006; Fujitsu R670 (Intel X5570, 2 chips, 8 cores) 42.2 SPECfp2006.