The X4100/X4200 coupled with Solaris 10U1 running Sybase IQ 12.6 has just achieved two new World Records on both 100GB and 300GB TPC-H benchmarks. This is a big step ahead considering that this is Sun's first TPC submission our x64 platform. Congratulations to everyone who was involved!

According to this blog, Asterisk PBX (a popular software PBX/VOIP solution that runs on many platforms) was found to be more scalable on Solaris 10 than on Linux. I've been playing with Asterisk a little bit and found it extremely powerful and flexible. We're trying to see if we can use it to host OpenSolaris conference calls over VOIP (for free!).

If you have a system with AMD Opteron processor(s), then try running the following program on it:

#include  <stdio.h>

inline void cpuid(unsigned int op, unsigned int *eax, unsigned int
*ebx, unsigned int *ecx, unsigned int *edx)
{
   __asm__("cpuid"
   : "=a" (*eax), "=b" (*ebx), "=c" (*ecx), "=d" (*edx)
   : "a" (op)
   : "cc");
}

int main(void)
{
   unsigned int eax,ebx,ecx,edx;
   unsigned int i=0;
   char array[17];
   char *cp=array;

   cpuid(0x8fffffff, &eax,&ebx,&ecx,&edx);

   for (i = 0; i < 4; i++)
       *cp++ = eax >> (8 * i);
   for (i = 0; i < 4; i++)
       *cp++ = ebx >> (8 * i);
   for (i = 0; i < 4; i++)
       *cp++ = ecx >> (8 * i);
   for (i = 0; i < 4; i++)
       *cp++ = edx >> (8 * i);
   *cp = 0;

   printf ("%s\n", array);
}

It can be easily compiled on Solaris with gcc:

$ /usr/sfw/bin/gcc -o opteron opteron.c

I'm very happy to announce the release of a new version of the CPU Caps project. This new version is based on Solaris Nevada build 40 and comes with a number of changes made since last release:

• CPU caps should now be more accurately enforced.
• FSS shares now work under caps (e.g., capped zone with projects in FSS class)
• Added DTrace probe for when threads are placed on wait queues (sched:::wait) for better observability
• Maximum CPU cap value was raised from 65535 to 1000000
• CPU caps now work property with hires_tick set to 1
• Added new -N option to prstat to show unnormalized CPU usage percentages (i.e, 100% = 1 CPU)

Hopefully, more people will download and try this version on their systems now. As always, please forward your comments and/or questions to cpu-caps-beta@sun.com. The feedback received so far had been very positive.