BM Seer Unofficial thoughts from an anonymous Sun employee

SPECweb2005 Sun Fire X4450 four 2.933 GHz Quad-core X7350 Xeons

Monday Dec 08, 2008

The Sun Fire X4450 64GB with four 2.933 GHz Quad-core Xeon X7350 obtained 39,793 SPECweb2005 using only 883 watts. The Sun Fire X4450 was running SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP2 with Accoria Networks, Rock Web Server v1.4.7 and Rock JSP/Servlet Container v1.3.2. This result demonstrates Sun Microsystems continued commitment to deliver the high performing servers, regardless of operating system environments.

The Sun Fire X4450 with 2.933GHz QC Xeons with 64GB of memory had an average power consumption of 883 watts. The average power consumption was measured for each of the three SPECweb2005 benchmark workloads during the steady state load period at peak load. The power-performance for the Sun Fire X4450 is .022, power-performance is computed as watt/performance. Since power-performance is related to price/performance they are both calculated with performance in the denominator.

This result is competitive to the HP ProLiant DL580 G5, HP's 4 socket Xeon X7350 offering.

The Sun Fire X4450 with 4x10Gb network links obtained similar performance to the HP DL580 G5 with 16x1Gb network links. By obtaining similar performance with fewer networks, IT management costs and server power consumption are reduced.

Competitive Landscape

Selected SPECweb2005 benchmark results as of 12/04/2008. Complete information at: http://www.spec.org website.
System
OS		 Chips, Cores
/Chip		 CPU (GHz) Web Server SPEC web
2005		 Bank Ecom Supp
HP PL DL585 G5
RedHat Linux		 4, 4 AMD 8356 QC (2.3) Rock1.4.7/ JRock v1.3.2 43854 76032 62304 39456
Fujitsu RX600 S4
RedHat Linux		 4, 4 Xeon QC X7350 (2.93) Rock1.4.7/ JRock v1.3.2 42783 75008 59264 39040
Sun SE T5220
Sol 10 05/08 		1, 8 US T2 (1.4) Sun JSWS 7.0 U3 41847 70000 58000 40000
HP PL DL580 G5
RedHat Linux		 4, 4 Xeon QC X7350 (2.93) Rock1.4.6/JRock v1.3.1 40046 71104 55552 36032
Sun Fire X4450
SLES 10 SP2		 4, 4 Xeon QC X7350 (2.93) Rock1.4.7/ JRock v1.3.2 39793 70500 57000 34750
Sun Fire X4240
RedHat Linux		 2, 4 AMD QC 2360SE (2.5) Rock1.4.7/ JRock v1.3.2 32288 53048 50008 28120
HP PL DL580 G5
RedHat Linux		 4, 4 Xeon QC X7350 (2.93) Rock1.4.1/JRock v1.2.0 30261 52160 42048 28000
HP PL DL385 G5
RedHat Linux		 2, 4 AMD 2356 QC (2.3) Rock1.4.6/JRock v1.3.1 30007 50856 46020 25584
HP PL DL380 G5
RedHat Linux		 2,4 Xeon QC X5460 (3.16) Rock1.4.6/ JRock v1.3.1 29591 51840 46512 23816
IBM p5 550
SuSE Linux 		2, 2 DC Pow5+ (1.9) Zeus4.3r1/ Tomcat 5.5.9 7881 12240 11820 7500

Measured power consumption from Sun Fire X4450 64GB with 4 2.933GHz QC Xeon, smaller watt/performance is better.

System Work- load Ave watt / perf Banking Ecomm Support
Avg
Watts 		Min, Max
Watt		 Avg
Watt		 Min, Max
Watt		 Avg
Watt		 Min, Max
Watt
1 x Sun Fire X4450 64GB 4-chip 2.93GHz QC Xeon 883w .0222 903w 781w, 923w 881w 620w, 906w 867w 734w, 897w
1 x Sun Fire T5220 64GB 1-chip 1.4GHz US T2 617w .0147            
1 x Sun Fire X4240 32GB 2-chip 2.5GHz QC Opteron 521w .0161            

At peak load, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 with 64GB had an average power consumption of 617 watts for the three SPECweb2005 benchmark workloads at steady-state measured watts during benchmark run. A blog about this result at: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/sun_s_even_faster_specweb2005

At peak load, the Sun SPARC Enterprise X4240 with 32GB had an average power consumption of 521 watts for the three SPECweb2005 benchmark workloads at steady-state measured watts during benchmark run.

You can look up competitive watts at:
HP DL580 power consumption from HP Power Calculator system configured with 4 x2.93GHz processors, redundant PSU, 16 x 4GB DIMMs, 8 x 36GB SAS drives,1 x PCI card, 80% utilisation: http://h30099.www3.hp.com/configurator/powercalcs.asp

HP DL380G5 power consumption from HP Power Calculator for system configured with 2 x X5460 3.16GHz processors, redundant PSU, 8 x 4GB DIMMs, 2 x HBAs and 2 x 146GB SAS drives, 80% utilisation: http://h30099.www3.hp.com/configurator/powercalcs.asp

Benchmark Description

SPECweb2005, is the latest industry standard benchmark for evaluating Web Server performance developed by SPEC. The benchmark simulates multiple user sessions accessing a Web Server and generating static and dynamic HTTP requests. The major features of SPECweb2005 are:

  • Measures simultaneous user sessions
  • Dynamic content: currently PHP and JSP implementations
  • Page images requested using 2 parallel HTTP connections
  • Multiple, standardized workloads: Banking (HTTPS), E-commerce (HTTP and HTTPS), and Support (HTTP)
  • Simulates browser caching effects
  • File accesses more accurately simulate today's disk access patterns

Example Disclosure Statement:

Sun Fire X4450 (16 cores, 4 chips) 39793 SPECweb2005.  HP ProLiant DL585 G5 ( 16 core, 4 chips) 43854 SPECweb2005.  Fujitsu Siemems Primergy RX600 S4 (16 cores, 4 chips) 42783  SPECweb2005.  Sun SPARC Enterprise X5220 (8 cores, 1 chip) 41847 SPECweb2005.  HP ProLiant DL585 G5 (16 cores/4 chips) 40046 SPECweb2005 (re-run of 2.93GHz).  Sun Fire X4240 (8 cores, 2 chips) 32288 SPECweb2005.  HP ProLiant DL585 G5 (16 cores, 4 chips) 30261 SPECweb2005 (initial 2.93 GHz run).  HP ProLiant DL385 G5 (8 cores, 2 chips) 30007 SPECweb2005.  HP ProLiant DL380 G5 (8 cores, 2 chips) 29591 SPECweb2005. PRIMERGY TX300 S4 (8 cores, 2 chips) 28127 SPECweb2005.  IBM p5 550 (4 cores, 2 chips) 7881 SPECweb2005. SPEC, SPECweb reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of Dec 4, 2008.

Sun Fire X4450 server power consumption was taken from measurements made during the benchmark runs of each workload at peak load, during the steady state load period. The power is the average measured watts during the benchmark run.

Results Summary

Results 39793 SPECweb2005
Reference Date: Dec 4, 2008
Systems: 1 x Sun Fire X4450, 64GB
Total Number Processors: 4 chips / 4 cores per chip
Processor/GHz of Server: 4 x Xeon 7350 2.933 GHz
Operating System: SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP2
Software: Rock Web Server v1.4.7 & Rock JSP/Servlet Container v1.3.2

Java HotSpot[TM] 64-Bit Server VM on Linux, Version 1.6.0_06 Performance Release

[4] Comments
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Posted at 10:54AM Dec 08, 2008 in Benchmark Issues
Tags:
Comments:

I see you fixed the initial typo of 0.222 to 0.0222 in the power table. However, there are many other errors still present in the blog entry.

In the main table, there are several results attributed to an HP DL585 G5 with Xeon processors, and no entry for the DL580 G5 with which the X4450 result is supposed to be competitive.. It is my understanding that ProLiants with Xeon (Intel) processors have model numbers ending in 0, not 5. The ProLiants with model numbers ending in 5 have AMD processors in them.

There is also a typo in the disclaimer/fair use section where "study state" is found.

Any particular reason why some entries in the table say Xeon and some say Intel?

Looking for the HP DL580 G5 result of 40046 on www.spec.org shows it used Rock 1.4.6 and Container 1.3.1, which is consistent with the result being from December of 2007, not 1.4.7/1.3.2 as found in your table.

Looking for the HP DL580 G5 result of 30261 on www.spec.org shows it used Rock 1.4.1 and Container 1.2.0, not 1.4.7/1.3.2 as found in your table

Looking for the DL385 G5 result of 30007 on www.spec.org shows it used Rock 1.4.6 and container 1.3.1 and not 1.4.7/1.3.2 as shown in your table.

Your analysis would have been more complete had it included power consumption for the external mass storage used in all the results.

Posted by rick jones on December 09, 2008 at 09:19 PM PST #

Rick Jones: Thanks for the help on fixing the HP typos, they were unintentional. Really appreciate the friendly pointers.

I really wish other vendors were so open. I would really like to add the HP power usage to the table, Rick do you have any way of finding that info?

The clear message inside Sun is to publish watts on every processor line, so I'm sure you'll see more on all kinds of benchmarks.

Posted by BM Seer on December 10, 2008 at 10:18 AM PST #

You are welcome. I would like to think I am an even handed curmudgeon :) As for power consumption on HP ProLiants (or Dells or IBMs) running SPECweb2005 you know as much as I do.

Posted by rick jones on December 10, 2008 at 07:19 PM PST #

Sorry, Rick mostly correct me on HP on subtle points of detail, so I thought you have lots of data on HP info.

Posted by BM Seer on December 11, 2008 at 10:19 AM PST #

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