BM Seer Unofficial thoughts from an anonymous Sun employee

SPECompL2001 Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 @ 2.52GHz

Wednesday Jul 16, 2008

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server using the new SPARC64 VII 2.52 GHz processor delivered results on the SPEC OMPL2001 benchmarks.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server, powered by 2.52GHz SPARC64 VII processors reset the World Record for SPECompL2001 with a result of 1,456,653 and a world record SPECompLbase2001 result of 1,250,890.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server beats the 128-socket SGI Altix 4700, Itanium2 DC 1.6GHz by 45% on SPECompL2001. There are no POWER6 results on this benchmark at this scale. (post a comment if I missed it on the SPEC website and I will post a correction).

Benchmark Description

The SPEC OMPM2001 Benchmark Suite was released in June 2001 and tests HPC performance using OpenMP for parallelism.

  • 11 programs (3 in C and 8 in Fortran) parallelized using OpenMP API
Goals of suite:
  • Targeted to mid-range (4-32 processor) parallel systems
  • Run rules, tools and reporting similar to SPEC CPU2000
  • Programs representative of HPC and Scientific Applications

Result Landscape SPECompL2001 (bigger is better, Results ordered by peak metric)

Result Cores Chips OpenMP
Threads		 System
Peak Base
1456653 1250890 256 64 192 Sun SE M9000, SPARC64 VII 2.52GHz
1230446 1148235 128 64 128 Sun SE M9000, SPARC64 VI 2.4GHz
1056459 1005583 64 32 128 IBM p5 595, POWER5 2.3GHz
1005076 987139 256 128 256 SGI Altix 4700, Itanium 2 1.6GHz
672757 620741 64 32 128 IBM p5 595, POWER5 1.9GHz
581807 532576 64 16 64 Sun SE M8000, SPARC64 VII 2.52GHz

Results from www.spec.org as of 14 July 2008

Disclosure Statement:

SPEC, SPEComp reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 07/14/08. Sun results submitted to SPEC. Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 (256 cores, 64 chips, 192/256 OMP threads, 2.52GHz) 1456653 SPECompM2001, 1250890 SPECompMbase2001. SGI Altix 4700 (256 cores, 128 chips, 256 OMP threads, Itanium 2 1.6GHz) 1005076 SPECompM2001, 987139 SPECompMbase2001.

Results Summary

Result
M9000: 1456653 SPECompL2001
  1250890 SPECompLbase2001
Reference Date: Jul 14, 2008
System: Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000
Total Number Processors: 64
Total Memory : 1 TB (512x2GB DIMMs)
Processor/GHz of Server: SPARC64 VII, 2.52 GHz
Operating System: Solaris 10
Compiler: Sun Studio 12

[7] Comments
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Posted at 05:49AM Jul 16, 2008 in Benchmark Issues
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Comments:

Found this today whilst browsing through the P595 redbook.

IBM is committed to enhancing its clients' investments in Power Systems servers. Based
on this commitment, IBM plans to provide the following enhancements:
 The capability to add additional processor books to POWER6 processor based 595
systems without powering down (Hot node Add)
 The capability to reactivate a POWER6 595 processor book that has been repaired
without powering down (Cold node Repair)
 The capability to: 1) deactivate, 2) repair components or add memory, and then 3)
reactivate a POWER6 595 processor book or POWER6 570 nodea without powering
down (Hot node Repair).
These capabilities are planned to be provided at no additional charge to POWER6 Power
595 and Power 570 clients via a system firmware upgrade by the end of 2008.

So i guess you wont be able to bang on about the hot swap processor capabilties of the M9000 for much longer too either ! :)

Posted by Alex on July 21, 2008 at 03:22 PM PDT #

OK so in 6 months IBM will have what Sun has had since the E10k days (15-20 years ago?) :)

Good their customers deserve this. Though it would be nice to intermix CPU speeds to be lighter on the customer's wallets.l

Posted by BM Seer on July 21, 2008 at 06:02 PM PDT #

yes, im sure thats really cost effective......not !

you really are a marketing droid arent you ! :)

perhaps in 5 years Sun (or should i say Fujitsu), maybe somewhere near IBM virtualization capaibilities of today. Maybe !

Posted by Alex on July 21, 2008 at 11:11 PM PDT #

..why is it that IBM supporters when told a fact that points out a weakness (IBM doesn't have hot swap now, this cost customers more - Sun has had this for a long time), respond with the same things:
1) This is getting fixed in the future (how about giving us a specific Month-year Alex?)
2) then resort to 'name calling' to attack the fact-bringer, ...calling me a "marketing droid" No Alex you are wrong again. I'm a perf engineer.

OK now let's address cost effective, instead of you vague FUD ("cost-effective......not!","perhaps in 5 years") and innuendo ("or should I say Fujitsu"). Really you sound exactly like what IBM sales guys tells customers -- that I've personally talked to after the IBM sales FUD.

On Sun if you bought a M9000 in the past with the previous CPUs, all you have to do is buy the new CPUs and have them hot swapped in. No downtime.

For IBM you have to either buy more of the older slower CPUs, OR forklift
the whole system out and buy a new system (not only buying the CPUs, but
buying all of the CPU activation fees on top of the CPUs).

Posted by BM Seer on July 22, 2008 at 10:31 AM PDT #

By the way alex, since you are commenting on this entry, where is the Power6 result on this benchmark SPECompL?

Posted by BM Seer on July 22, 2008 at 10:32 AM PDT #

Alex I forgot to say, if you decided to buy the old CPUs to put in the old server (after buying the CPUs and then doubling the cost to buy the CPU-activiation fees), you'd then have to down the system to install them.

...but all of this gets fixed in the future I presume, and I'm an idiot and
ugly too.

Posted by BM Seer on July 22, 2008 at 10:34 AM PDT #

The fact that cpu's cant be hot swapped today, isnt really a huge issue imho. CPU's rarely fail in IBM kit, and there are RAS features available such as CUoD and dynamic expansion for the modular p570 which allows expansion to add additional CEC's with CPU's & memory if you really need to.

However, i guess someone somewhere wants this feature, which is why IBM is putting it in this year sometime. Perhaps its just to give you Sunshiners 1 less thing to shout about !...i dont know.

No, i dont know the exact date of when hot swap cpu's will be here..(im not an IBM employee btw), but only 5 months left in 2008, so take your pick ! :)

No i have no idea where the benchmark is for SPECompL. No doubt if and when it is published, i can read all about how Suns XYZ system is X time better (blah blah drone drone). Beleive it or not, i really dont read too much into these published benchmarks. We all know anything can be made to look pretty with benchmarks and statistics. Yes....even your T2000s ! :)

btw, i love the irony in your posts, with you moaning about others posting FUD ! :-P

Posted by Alex on July 22, 2008 at 01:28 PM PDT #

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