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UltraSPARC T2: more floating-point performance

Tuesday Aug 07, 2007

More about floating-point on the Sun UltraSPARC T2 in this posting, In the previous posting SPECfp_2006 scores and the UltraSPARC T2 design being open-sourced were discussed.

In the UltraSPARC T2 there are eight floating-point units that are well suited for scientific applications. Based upon preliminary runs the Sun UltraSPARC T2 processor at 1.4 GHz beats all single chip scores showing 14230(est)/15081(est) SPECompMbase2001/SPECompMpeak2001.

How do these preliminary runs (we must use the term "estimated" by SPEC rules) compare to SPECompMbase2001/SPECompMpeak2001 scores?

These Sun UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz processor scores beat the best single-chip IBM p520 POWER5+ 1.9GHz processor published result by 85%.
...Sun is waiting for POWER6 4.7GHz results, maybe UltraSPARC T2 results will scare IBM from ever publishing a single-chip result?

Benchmark description:

The SpecOMP benchmark is a test of the performance of 9 High Performance computing applications. It is used to compare the performance of shared memory servers. All C/C++ and FORTRAN applications in this suite use the OpenMP programming model that provides a portable, scalable model for developing parallel applications for platforms ranging from the desktop to the supercomputer.

The OpenMP Application Program Interface (API) supports multi-platform shared-memory parallel programming in C/C++ and Fortran on all architectures, from the largest Unix servers to the small Windows NT platforms.

Disclosure statement:

All UltraSPARC T2 SPEC CPU metrics quoted are from full “reportable” runs, but are nevertheless designated as “estimates” because they use preproduction systems. SPEC, and SPEComp registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Sun UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz (1 chip, 8 cores, 64 threads) 14230 (est)/ 15081 (est) SPECompMbase2001/SPECompMpeak2001. Competitive results from www.spec.org as of August 6, 2007. IBM p520 1.9GHz (1 chip, 2 cores, 4 threads) published 8141/8174 SPECompMbase2001/SPECompMpeak2001.

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Posted at 01:04PM Aug 07, 2007 in Benchmarks
Tags: cmt hpc opensource opensparc performance power6 solaris sparc specfp_rate2006 specint_rate2006 specomp sun t2 t5120 t5220 ultrasparc

Comments:

If you want straight compute power you go mainframe. I still think the p6 will outperform most compute intensive apps whether it is c code, java code or database compared to niagra2. Niagra is a stop gap because SUN couldn't deliver the ROCK chip to compete with the first ibm power chip (regatta). ROCK was regatta on chip killer. And that was end of 2001. Latest I heard was ROCK is out in 2009, 8 years is a long time to make a chip to compete with. Forget performance, ibm servers are solid and their virtualization is uncompared. Sun doesn't have a virtualization strategy, zones and containers are nothing but glorified stacking. Ldom's only in the niagra line and the niagra1 we tested was slow, very slow.

Posted by Tim on August 09, 2007 at 01:00 PM PDT #

I'd gladly give up the trophy for best "single chip" floating point performance for the award(s) for best overall application performance, which is basically what POWER5, and now POWER6, continue to do day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Have you looked at TPC-C, SAP, ORACLE/PSOFT benchmarks lately? Where's SUN? Their technology is a joke.

Posted by John on August 10, 2007 at 09:12 AM PDT #