SPECpower Issues Watts up? Two views
Wednesday Mar 04, 2009
A couple of postings ago in http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/specpower_ssj_obscuring_important_factors I mentioned how I thought they had too much detail in the wrong places. I do want critical things listed, but can we please focus on the important issues to power of REALISTIC CONFIGURATIONS. What does spec place in the summary table? Information on the JVM, GREAT, but what about size memory? Look at the results page and see that some vendors used 110+ characters to describe the JVM used in the main summary table. Misplaced details.
Standard bodies need to concentrate focus on important system issues FIRST have extraneous like testing location ruthlessly located in the back of the document.
To me it looks like the SPECpower was designed by people who focus on CPUs rather than the system that's likely to be deployed in a REAL customer environment. I also see this when looking at one of our more frequent commenters, rick jones who wrote:
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Still my take on the power draws in a SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark, at least as they have been published thusfar it would be processors, dimms, what I've seen called alternatively the CEC (Core Electronics Complex) or glue or perhaps "other motherboard components," and either the power supply or the boot disc.
This is a very CPU-centric view, in my opinion Rick's list boils down to:
- processors,
- dimms,
- CEC (Core Electronics Complex) or motherboard components,
- the power supply,
- boot disc.
Rather funny that he considers one of the things you can't configure in a system to be 3rd on the list.
I'd rather take a more system's view on a wide variety of tests! Shouldn't we just show power WHENEVER WE RUN ANY BENCHMARK! Sun does. Are others avoiding this because they can't beat Sun? Likely.
Having looked at REAL customer configurations and lots of SPECpower results, my view of the most important things to report on a system configuration when measuring power are:
- Memory Size (GBs), some use boutique LV-DIMMS
- Fans (need to mention when non-redundant) - most SPECpower results use NON-redundant ?!?
- Power supply (need to mention when non-redundant) - many SPECpower use NON-redundant
- Power management SW - Please tell me why is this NOT on by default for all servers?
- Processor type & GHz
- Disks - most deployed servers have standard RPM good size disk or disks! - most SPEC power results have a single 60GB-160GB?!? 7200RPM antique
SPEC and SPECpower benchmark name are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. www.spec.org for details.
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