BM Seer Unofficial thoughts from an anonymous Sun employee

HP watts up with no specification?

Friday Mar 21, 2008

HP DL 580 G5 = 387 watts at 100% target load

Reading "HP ProLiant DL580 G5 server posts highest 4P result on the new SPECpower_ssj2008(TM) benchmark" brochure leaves one quite confused. HP does not specify processor GHz or Memory size, why?. Take note SPEC members: you guys need to force that be clearly specified in the future, or you will just encourage confusion. An HP DL580 G5 4P QC 1.86GHz Xeon 16GB uses 387 watts at 100% target load!

...or... HP DL 580 G5 = 942 watts at average (uncomparable test)

IBM points to a Principled technologies paper (by the way, who commissioned that paper?). Looking at that paper they clearly specify the memory size, processor GHz, and measured average wattage. An HP DL580 G5 4P QC 2.93GHz Xeon 64GB uses 942 average watts!

I do not present these wattage numbers for comparison, as they are different tests. But what are the real watts of a DL580 G5? Clearly HP isn't telling us what we need to know.

I'd suggest SPEC require better disclosure of information and clearly show effects of processor GHz and memory size. MEMORY SIZE makes a HUGE difference in watts. Wake up world! Again my plea to add power measurements and power-performance metrics to all performance benchmarks at full utilization.

SPEC Disclosure statement

SPECpower_ssj2008:HP Proliant DL580 G5 (4-chip QC Xeon L7345 1.86GHz, 16GB), 546 overall ssj_ops/watt, 359523 ssj_ops and 387 watt at 100% target load, 255512 ssj_ops and 359 watt at 70% target load, and 71409 ssj_ops and 294 watt at 20% target load. SPEC, SPECpower reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 12/11/07.

note: if anyone has corrections to the above disclosure, let me know in comment below as quickly as you can and I will correct it immediately. I don't attend SPEC meetings so I don't know all of the rules, but I try my best to write disclosures correctly.

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