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Sun SPARC Enterprise T6320 SPECint_rate2006 Single-Chip World Record

Thursday Oct 11, 2007

The Sun Blade 6000 chassis can run Solaris, Linux, Windows, and VMware running on single and multi-core processors by Sun, AMD, and Intel, in one chassis. It is a 10-blade, 10RU Sun Blade 6000 Chassis.

Sun has announced single chip World Record results for SPECint_rate2006. This result was run on the Sun Blade T6320 blade module which uses the 1.4 GHz UltraSPARC T2 processor.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server, running at 1.4 GHz, beat all single chip results running SPECint_rate2006 with a result of 78.5.

The Sun Blade T6320 system beats the best single IBM 4.7 GHz dual-core POWER6 processor result by 29%.

The Sun Blade T6320 system beat the best published single 3 GHz Xeon quad-core by 28% on SPECint_rate2006.

There are no single quad-core Opteron results published for SPECint_rate2006.

SPEC SPECint_rate2006 Performance - bigger is better, selected recent results, please see www.spec.org for complete results.

System CPU Performance
Type, GHz Chips, Cores,Threads Peak Base
T6320 US T2 1.4GHz 1, 8, 64 78.6 73.1
T5120/T5220 US T2, 1.4GHz 1, 8, 64 78.5 73.0
HP DL360 G5 Intel Xeon QC 3GHz 1, 4, 4 61.3 53.8
IBM p 570 Power6 4.7GHz 1, 2, 4 60.9 53.2
Fujitsu RX300 Intel Xeon, 2.66 Xeon 1, 4, 4 52.8 50.5
Yes UltraSPARC T2 result differences are in the noise between these platforms, SPEC allows run-to-run variations. Notice these results are 0.127% to 0.137% (yes near 1/10 of 1%) different.

Results as of 9 Jan 2008 from www.spec.org.

Benchmark Description

SPEC CPU2006 is made up of two suites of benchmarks, CFP2006 and CINT2006. CFP2006 targets floating-point performance, while CINT2006 targets integer performance.

Each suite has two different measures. First is the CPU measure, which is the performance on the suite as a single stream. This can be either a single thread or automatic compiled parallel run. This measure is further defined by base and optimized runs. Base uses the same compiler flags for all kernels, where optimized is allowed to use different compiler flags for each kernel. Results are compared against a baseline system run that was standardized by SPEC.

The second measure is Rate. It is a measure of how many CPU measures can be run at a time. Typically, it is run as n processes on n processors. It shows how well the same job mix can run on a system under some load. It also is run as a base and optimized set of results.

Disclosure Statement:

SPEC, SPECint reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results as of 9 Jan 2008 from www.spec.org. Sun Blade T6320 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores), 78.6 SPECint_rate2006. Sun Blade T6320 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores), 78.6 SPECint_rate2006. IBM p570 (POWER6, 1 chip, 2 cores), 60.9 SPECint_rate2006. Sun Blade T6320 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores), 78.6 SPECint_rate2006. HP DL360 G5 (X5365, 1 chip, 4 cores), 61.3 SPECint_rate2006.

Results Summary

Results
Reference Date: 9 Jan 2008
System: Sun Blade T6320
Processor: Sun UltraSPARC T2, 1.4 GHz
  78.6 SPECint_rate2006
Software: Solaris 10, Sun Studio 12 Compiler

[1] Comments
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Posted at 08:45AM Oct 11, 2007 in Benchmarks
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Comments:

First off, i want to say i am a happy user and purchaser of T1 and soon T2 servers.

Great to see it is the best single-socket CPU.

BUT, you have to admit there is a cost issue to T2 servers compared to dual-socket x86. Let me demonstrate ...

A T5120 at 1.2 Ghz, 8 cores, 16 GB, is 25,000 $ on Sun website

Now i take your 78.6 score, go to SPEC, see the nearest x86 8-core score and find the dual-E5345 with near-identical results. So now i go to Dell site, select the following:

A Dell 2950, dual-E5345, 8 cores, 16 Gb, result .... 5,200 $

No, there is no typo, its indeed a 5x price difference for the same performance. Well actually the dell is faster as the T5120 on the online store is with a 1.2 Ghz CPU, not 1.4 ;(

So, now you will respond with SWap and other factors, it's fine for me, but i simply cannot defend this basic comparison of Spec/$ in front of my customers, and have to admit i recommend x86 servers for budget-tight customers.

PS: My app runs equally well on both platforms, so i am neutral app-wise.

Posted by pasender on October 16, 2007 at 10:50 AM PDT #

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