Friday Apr 25, 2008
IBM finally let the truth out about their $70K/core pricing - and it is just as I said. Now you can do your own $/perf analysis. IBM has posted real prices publicly on the web. I've included those links and a summary of the cost breakdown for those expensive cores.
IBM p570 4-core 64GB Memory(667MHz) = $287K or $71K/core
- $50.9K for base system
(chassis, 2-sas disks, two 1600w power supplies, IO, ethernet, etc.) = $50.9K
- $115.0K for 4-core of 4.7GHz CPUs (note: you have to buy the CPUs and then pay for activation: part#7380 4.7GHZ POWER6-2/0CORE 12 DDR2 2x$11,500, part#5403
ONE PROC (1-core) Activation fee FOR FC#7380 is 4x$23,000)
- $121.2 for 64GB of 667MHz memory (note: you have to buy the memory and then pay for activation: part#5694 0/8GB DDR2 Memory(4X2GB) DIMMs - 8*$3,035, part#5680 Activation of 1GB DDR2 POWER6 64*$1,515)
IBM p570 8-core 128GB Memory(667MHz) = $553.8K or $69k/core
- $81.4K base system (chassis, 2-sas disks, two 1600w power supplies, IO, ethernet, etc.)
- $230.0K for 8-core of 4.7GHz CPUs (note: you have to buy the CPUs and then pay for activation: part#7380 4.7GHZ POWER6-2/0CORE 12 DDR2 4x$11,500, part#5403
1-core Activation fee FOR FC#7380 is 8x$23,000)
- $242.4k for 128GB of 667MHz memory (note: you have to buy the memory and then pay for activation: part#5694 0/8GB DDR2 Memory(4X2GB) DIMMs - 16*$3,035, part#5680 Activation of 1GB DDR2 POWER6 128*$1,515)
IBM's official public links, found by Googling:
IBM p570 power6 4.7GHz pricing:
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/8/897/ENUS107-288/ENUS107288.PDF
IBM p595 power6 5.0GHz pricing:
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/7/897/ENUS108-257/index.html
OK, Its very very late now, so I don't have time to post the 4.2GHz and slower memory, but it really doesn't change the price story that much, anyway you can go to the links and find it yourself.
Wednesday Apr 23, 2008
Just saw this posting on c0t0d0s0:
IBM understands the art of nonsensical comparision to perfection. IBM Germany tries to convince the customers, that Sun is extremly expensive. Okay, at first: They use the oldest trick in their portfolio again. Comparing a new system with an old system. The p570 is a system introduced last year. The UltraSPARC IV+ with 1.8 GHz was introduced in August 2006. We´ve introduced the UltraSPARC T2 and the SPARC64-based system since.
Read the complete at:
http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/4203-Benchmark-games-today-The-german-Power6-brings-the-truth-to-daylight-campaign.html
Thursday Apr 17, 2008
HP puts out various "real stories" about competitors. They have an updated one about the new IBM power6 systems.
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/cache/107848-0-0-0-121.aspx
I'll try to comment on some of them:
Fact 1 they state:
IBM software experts have admitted that software already tuned for out-of-order version of POWER is, “no [sic] so good for in-order power6 processor.”
“Maximizing Application Performance on POWER” IBM Linux on POWER GCC Team Lead, April 19, 2007, page 8,
SW_Summit_gcc_and_tool_chain_Peter.pdf
If you don't understand the issues with"out-of-order", what you can take away is that not every technology that you hear hyped by vendors will give you a true advantage when you look at whole system performance on real applications.
Fact 2 & 3: shows that adding GHz doesn't add delivered performance but it does add a disproportionate number of watts. IBM p 595 (POWER6) 27,500 watts max for 64 cores.
27500w/64-core = 430watts/power6-core
The max rated system electrical load for the POWER6-595 server has increased nearly 5000 watts over the POWER5-p595 for the same number of processors.(ENUS108-257)
Then they go on to compare multi-threaded server chips with a 1-job benchmark. I don't know why they didn't compare on server benchmark SPECrate_int2006, maybe when you test these as servers you see real differences. Let's look at the latest 2-chip results for Itanium2, power6, and UltraSPARC T2 Plus:
A 2-chip Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server, running the UltraSPARC T2 Plus processor at 1.4 GHz, beat the 2-chip IBM 4.7GHz POWER6-based p570 by 29% on the SPECint_rate2006 benchmark, and also beat the 2-chip HP 1.66GHz Itanium-based Integrity rx2660 by 2.5 times on the SPECint_rate2006 benchmark.
Fact 4: shows IBM is raising its software prices.
Fact 5: HP states that AIX 6.1 will be needed to more fully exploit POWER6, and then asks: how many ISV applications are certified for AIX 6.1?
For more on the latest SPECint_rate 2006 results see:
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/2_chip_spec_cpu2006_rate
For more on prices on small 4-core IBM: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/some_ibm_power6_actual_prices
I haven't seen anything on IBM p 595 power6 prices 64-core 5GHz, if you have any pointers please post in the comments.
Disclosure statement:
SPEC, SPECint reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Sun result submitted to SPEC, other results from www.spec.org as of 4/7/08. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 (UltraSPARC T2 Plus, 2 chips, 16 cores), 157 SPECint_rate2006; IBM p 570 (POWER6, 2 chips, 4 cores), 122 SPECint_rate2006, HP Integrity rx2660 (Itanium2, 2-chip, 1.66GHz/18MB), 62.8 SPECint_rate2006.
Wednesday Apr 02, 2008
IBM and those who comment on this blog (employees? or just fans?) are trying to ignore that the UltraSPARC T5120/T5220 simply outperforms the 4-core 4.7GHz (2-chip) IBM p 570. They try to say that we should compare not to the price of 4.7GHz IBM p570 (which is slower than UltraSPARC T5120/T5220), but compare to even lower GHz 4.2GHz IBM p 550 (4-core)/4.2GHz IBM p 520 (4-core) so IBM doesn't look so bad? What, this makes no sense! When they lose, do they just make stuff up and ignore that people can think on their own?
Simply put Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220/T5120 are faster than the 4.7GHz IBM p 570 (4-core). See the benchmarks below:
SPECjbb2005: The Sun T5220 server (single UltraSPARC T2) demonstrated 9% better performance than the 4-core 4.7GHz IBM p570 (POWER6) result of 175,474 SPECjbb2005 bops 87737 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM. The Sun T5220 server has 2.5x better power-performance and has 4.9x better SWaP than the IBM 4-core p570.
SAP-SD: The 2RU Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 server with a 1.4 GHz UltraSPARC T2 processor outperformed the 4RU IBM System p570 with two 4.7 GHz POWER6 dual-core (quad-thread) processors by 7%.
SPECjAppServer2004: One Sun T5220 server (single UltraSPARC T2 chip) demonstrated 67% better performance over the IBM result of 1197.51 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard which used 4-core IBM p570 with 4.7GHz POWER6 processors. The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 used as Application server has 3.8x better power-performance and has 7.3x better SWaP than the IBM p570 power6. Enterprise T5120 used as database servrer has 3.4 better power-performance and has 13.5x better SWaP as the IBM p550.
Siebel: The benchmark demonstrates that the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 Servers provide the highest performing and the most cost-effective business solution for Siebel CRM applications. This is achieved through a powerful combination of Oracle's Siebel CRM Release 8.0 architecture with Oracle 10g R2 database running on a 8-core / 64 threads UltraSPARC T2 processor, Sun Java System Web Server, and the industry leading, free and open Solaris 10 OS.
http://www.oracle.com/apps_benchmark/doc/Sun_Siebel8_10000_PSPP_On_Solaris.pdf
Pointer to IBM p 570 paper:
http://www.oracle.com/apps_benchmark/doc/IBM_Siebel8_7000_PSPP_On_AIX_POWER6%20Final.pdf
SPECweb2005: NO results from 4.7GHz IBM p570!
Disclosure statement:
SPECjbb2005 Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 (1 chip, 8 cores) 192055 SPECjbb2005 bops, 24007 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (1 chip, 8 cores) 192055 SPECjbb2005 bops, 24007 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM,
IBM p570 (2 chips, 4 cores) 175474 SPECjbb2005 bops, 87737 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM, SPEC, SPECjbb reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results as of 10/08/2007 on www.spec.org.
Two-tier SAP Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) standard SAP ERP 2005 application benchmark: SPARC Enterprise Model T5120 (1-way, 1 proc, 8 cores, 64 threads) 1 x 1.4 GHz UltraSPARC T2, 64GB memory, 2175 SD Benchmark users, 1.91 sec avg response time, Cert#2007059, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10; IBM System p 570 (2-way, 2 processors, 4 cores, 8 threads) 2 x 4.7 GHz POWER6+, 32GB memory, 2035 SD Benchmark users, 1.99s avg resp time, Cert#2007037, Oracle 10g, AIX 5L Version 5.3; SAP, R/3, mySAP reg TM of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. More info www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark.
SPECjAppServer2004 1 Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (8 cores, 1 chip) and 1 Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 (8 cores, 1 chip) 2000.92 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard. 1 IBM p570 (4 cores, 2 chips) and 1 IBM p550 (4 cores, 2 chips) 1197.51 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard. 1 HP rx2660 (4 cores, 2 chips) and 1 HP rx2660 (4 cores, 2 chips) 874.17 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard. SPEC, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 10/10/2007.
SPEC, SPECint registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 server (1xUltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz) (1 chip, 8 cores, 64 threads) 83.9 SPECint_rate2006. Competitive results from www.spec.org as of February 12, 2008. IBM System p570 (4.7GHz POWER6 processor, 1 chip, 2 cores, 4 threads) 60.9 SPECint_rate2006. HP Proliant DL360 G5 (3.16 GHz, Intel Xeon processor X5460,1 chip, 4 cores, 4 threads) 73.0 SPECint_rate2006.
Wednesday Mar 26, 2008
IBM only seems to pin all of their marketing on core count (metric/core). This is disingenuous.
IBM does not compare benchmark results on cost of systems, #RU, hardware cost,
TCO, $/perf, watt/performance, etc. I guess IBM would just lose if they use metrics that are important to customers?
Any one can do the math, just ask IBM for price quotes on 4.7GHz with a reasonable 8 GB/core of memory, then divide price by number of cores. OUCH. IBM has by far the most expensive cores industry.
But are are those expensive IBM cores fast enough to give you better performance or $/perf? Nope, Sun's CMT servers cleans their clocks - server to server. Just look at the many benchmarks where a Sun T5220/T5120 beats a 4-core, 4RU 4.7GHZ IBM p570 (with better perf, $/perf, watt/perf, SWaP, TCO, etc). http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/benchmarks/index.jsp
humor with a point to follow: Why do IBM cores cost so much? maybe because to support an IBM core requires so much expensive stuff.
IBM p570 (4RU, 2 CPU, 4 cores) weight 140lb, or 35.0lb/core
Sun T5220(2RU, 1 CPU, 8 cores) weight 52lbs, or 6.5lb/core
Monday Mar 17, 2008
On the Sun Blade blog...
"Sun has made IBM aware of their factual errors about the Sun Blade
products and IBM will eventually correct their blade "Dare To Compare"
web page. In the meantime, to make things clearer here is one claim
where IBM is wrong about Sun Blades. We will share a few more of these IBM 'misrepresented truths' over the next few days ... so stay tuned.
Read more at:
Would IBM "Dare To Compare" blade offerings more accurately? (#1)
Would IBM "Dare To Compare" blade offerings more accurately? (#2)
Would IBM "Dare To Compare" blade offerings more accurately? (#3)
Would IBM "Dare To Compare" blade offerings more accurately? (#4)
Tuesday Jan 22, 2008
I heard from many in the field that IBM hates this Siebel benchmark head-to-head comparison and is trying to do anything to remove it from consideration. It really shows the advantages of Sun's US T2 systems on something real (and agrees with the other benchmarks of course. Well it is out there and they can't make us remove it.
If you want the URL it is: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/siebel_crm_8_0_pspp.
...I've seen more benchmarks in the works around the hallways at Sun, you'll see them soon.
Wednesday Jan 16, 2008
IBM is still actively trying to confuse customers with core count.
Remember the internal structure (read "core") is NOT important. What is
important is system-to-system comparison.
People buy systems, put workloads on them, and measure performance. No one cares
how many widgets are inside the system! If the faster system is a lower-cost
fewer chip system - all the better! This is the reason why many customers are switching
from POWER6 systems to buy Sun's US T2 systems. No one cares that IBM has 4 widgets
buried inside that expensive IBM box.
It is system perf, system $/perf, system watt/perf, -- it
is not a system's core-count!
IBM continues to withhold actual POWER6 power measurements on actual
SPEC benchmarks. It is so easy to hook up a power meter to systems
under test on a benchmark. Is IBM scared of the truth?
In the mean time, Sun will continue to do good faith estimates of
32GB and 64GB POWER6 systems. Sun never uses book maximums or
nameplate maximums, we make allowances (which by the way, are correct
whenever we measure on competitive systems). If Sun is so wrong
why doesn't IBM publish actual data?
...And please make it on Power6 systems
with 32GB-64GB and 4.7GHz only, just like the systems IBM uses on
performance benchmarks.
Here's Sun's data compared to IBM on perf, watt/perf:
Thursday Dec 06, 2007
In the past posting there was a comment that one can't compare high-end Power6 systems with what they call low-end T2 systems. Quite simply UltraSPARC T2 systems can out perform Power6 on important datacenter workloads and much lower cost. Little need to buy from the ultra-expensive-IBM.
- SAP-SD, clearly a high-end ERP benchmark with SAP and database.
Sun T5120 Beats ultra-expensive 4-core IBM p570 4.7 GHz POWER6 by 7%.
Oracle Database used on Sun's SAP-SD.
- SPECjAppServer, another application tier and database-tier benchmark.
Good for high-end servers, clearly UltraSPARC T2 is in that class
and much less expensive the Power6. UltraSPARC T2 used as Oracle Database server.
Sun T5120 67% faster 4-core IBM p570 4.7GHz Power6
App Server: 3.8 better power-perf & 7x better SWaP
Oracle Server: 3.4 better power-perf & 14x better SWaP
- SPECjbb, another application benchmark with lots of big servers.
Sun T5220 9% faster than 4-core IBM p570 4.7GHz POWER6, 2.5x better power-performance & 5x better SWaP
- SPECint_rate2006:
UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz beats best 1-chip(2-core) IBM POWER6 4.7GHz by 29%
- No SPECweb2005 on power6, OK web is not an application for Power6
otherwise they would have published. However IBM did publish on the
IBM p550 Power5 (an embarrassingly low result). Evidently the even
more expensive are reputably faster Power6 couldn't get to the level of performance.
Pricing dataquoted to a customer!
IBM p570 POWER6 4.7GHz 4-core, 32GB $252K USD
IBM p570 POWER6 4.7GHz 4-core, 64GB $313K USD ($78K/core!!!)
So I'm left with 4-core Power6 is way to expensive and doesn't have
any more redundancy features that UltraSPARC T2 which outperforms it.
The only public info that lists IBM component prices that I know is at:
http://www.tpc.org/results/individual_results/IBM/IBM_570_10000GB_20071015_ES.pdf
Disclosure statement
SPEC, SPECint reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 11/13/07. Sun Blade T6320 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores), 78.6 SPECint_rate2006. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores), 78.5 SPECint_rate2006.Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 gccfss (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores), 78.0 SPECint_rate2006. IBM p570 (POWER6, 1 chip, 2 cores), 60.9 SPECint_rate2006. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores), 62.3 SPECfp_rate2006. IBM p570 (POWER6, 1 chip, 2 cores), 58.0 SPECfp_rate2006.
SPEC, SPEComp reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Other results from www.spec.org as of 11/13/07. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (1 chip, 8 cores, 64 threads, 1.4 GHz) 16208 SPECompM2001. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (1 chip, 8 cores, 64 threads, 1.4 GHz) 16208 SPECompM2001. IBM p5 520 (1 chip, 2 cores, 4 threads, 1.9 GHz) 8174 SPECompM2001. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (1 chip, 8 cores, 64 threads, 1.4 GHz) 16208 SPECompM2001.
Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (8 cores, 1 chip) 37001 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 Nov 13, 2007. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server power consumption taken from measurements made during the benchmark run. Power is average measured watts during benchmark run.IBM 550 power specifications calculated by applying 70% of the Maximum Watts published in “Facts and Features Report”, 11/14/06, posted at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_sp/n/PSB01628USEN/PSB01628USEN.PDF.
SPECjbb2005 Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 (1 chip, 8 cores) 192055 SPECjbb2005 bops, 24007 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (1 chip, 8 cores) 192055 SPECjbb2005 bops, 24007 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 (1 chip, 8 cores) 170153 SPECjbb2005 bops, 170153 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (1 chip, 8 cores) 170153 SPECjbb2005 bops, 170153 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220 results submitted to SPEC, IBM p570 (1 chip, 2 cores) 88089 SPECjbb2005 bops, 88089 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM, IBM p570 (2 chips, 4 cores) 175474 SPECjbb2005 bops, 87737 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM, IBM p505Q (2 chips, 4 cores) 63544 SPECjbb2005 bops, 31772 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM, SPEC, SPECjbb reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results as of 10/08/2007 on www.spec.org. The 2-core IBM p570 POWER6 system requires 4 RU or 4 times the rack space of a Sun T5120 and consumes on average 1040 Watts of power. The 4-core IBM p570 POWER6 system requires 4 RU or twice the rack space of a Sun T5220 and consumes on average 1040 Watts of power. IBM p6 570 2-core & 4-core power specifications from 80% of maximum report power consumption published here, 06/07/07, posted here. The IBM p505Q POWER5+ system requires 1 RU of rack space and consumes on average 320 Watts of power. IBM p505 power specifications from 80% of maximum report power consumption published in ?Facts and Features Report?, 03/27/06, posted here.
1 IBM p570 (4 cores, 2 chips) and 1 IBM p550 (4 cores, 2 chips) 1197.51 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard. 1 IBM p505Q (4 cores, 2 chips) and 1 IBM p550(4 cores, 2 chips) 618.38 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard. SPEC, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 10/10/2007. The IBM p570 POWER6 system requires 4RU or twice the rack space of a Sun T5220 and consumes on average 1040 Watts of power. The IBM p6 570 power specifications from 80% of maximum report power consumption published 06/07/07, posted here. The IBM p505Q requires 1 RU of rack space and consumes on average 320* Watts of power. The IBM p505 power specifications from 80% of maximum report power consumption published in "Facts and Features Report", 03/27/07, posted here. The IBM p550 requires 4RU of rack space and consumes on average 770* Watts of power. The IBM p5 power specifications calculated by applying 70% of the power numbers published in ?Facts and Features Report?, 3/10/06, posted < href=http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/factsfeatures.html> here.
Two-tier SAP Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) standard SAP ERP 2005 application benchmark: SPARC Enterprise Model T5120 (1-way, 1 proc, 8 cores, 64 threads) 1 x 1.4 GHz UltraSPARC T2, 64GB memory, 2175 SD Benchmark users, 1.91 sec avg response time, Cert#20070xx, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10; SPARC Enterprise Model T2000 | Sun Fire T2000 (1-way, 1 proc, 8 cores, 32 threads) 1 x 1.4 GHz UltraSPARC T1, 64GB memory, 1100 SD Benchmark users, 1.91 sec avg response time, Cert#2007051, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10; IBM System p 570 (2-way, 2 processors, 4 cores, 8 threads) 2 x 4.7 GHz POWER6, 32GB memory, 2035 SD Benchmark users, 1.99s avg resp time, Cert#2007037, Oracle 10g, AIX 5L Version 5.3; SAP, R/3, mySAP reg TM of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. More info www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark.
Wednesday Dec 05, 2007
IBM makes many of its world records claims based on core count. IBM is relying on everyone to think that every vendors cores roughly cost the same. However, cost per core varies widely, with IBM leading the pack in the wrong way. IBM cores are 2x to 10x more expensive than other vendors. IBM simply has very expensive systems that have been out-performed by Sun's UltraSPARC T2 based servers. The UltraSPARC T2 servers are faster and have better price-performance than IBM's Power6 systems.
Sun has always advocated that one needs to look at system price as benchmarked.
IBM tries to say that low-cost = "cheap junk". One needs to look at
performance, price-performance, and power-performance of the configurations benchmarked. The only problem is IBM hides actual prices and actual power. I guess the truth hurts IBM, so they stick to their marketing drone..."fastest core".
Let's get to the real costs from a customer quote!
IBM p570 POWER6 4.7GHz 4-core, 32GB $252K USD
IBM p570 POWER6 4.7GHz 4-core, 64GB $313K USD ($78K/core!!!)
The only public info that lists IBM component prices that I know is at:
http://www.tpc.org/results/individual_results/IBM/IBM_570_10000GB_20071015_ES.pdf
You can do your own comparisons to 2-socket Quad-core Opteron, 2-socket Quad-core Xeon,
or the 1 chip 8-core UltraSPARC T2 all with reasonable amount of memory 32GB to 64GB.
Clearly you can't just say "best 4-core" or "best 8-core" in performance and hide prices without being rotten to the core 
Friday Nov 30, 2007
Here are some quick IBM POWER6 prices that have been quoted to a customer!
IBM p570 POWER6 4.7GHz 4-core, 32GB $252K USD
IBM p570 POWER6 4.7GHz 4-core, 64GB $313K USD
...it would be so much easier if IBM just posted their prices on these small servers.
I'll have to check how these compare to TPC-C pricing at some point...
http://www.tpc.org/results/individual_results/IBM/IBM_570_10000GB_20071015_ES.pdf
Also how does that compare to 2-socket Quad-core Opteron, 2-socket Quad-core Xeon,
or the 1 chip 8-core UltraSPARC T2 all with reasonable amount of memory.
Clearly you can't just say "best 4-core" or "best 8-core" in performance and hide prices without being rotten to the core
...ready, steady, go. ...to the weekend.
Wednesday Nov 28, 2007
This is really good information on IBM POWER6 http://blogs.sun.com/jmeyer/entry/power6_goes_thud_part_vii
Also shows why you can't believe IBM at all when they talk about best cores.
Tomorrow I'll review *IBM's actual pricing of cores*, IBM leads the industry in the
very doubious category of worst price per core by a HUGE factor. While enjoying the
american holiday of thanksgiving a friend's neighbor walked me over to his house
and showed me actual price quotes on IBM power6 OUCH! I totally nailed
the pricing correctly http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/part2_ibm_power6_cores_extremely!
Yes if you take the
price IBM charges you for a Power6 system with reasonable memory and divide that system price by the number of cores in a configuration you find the price is $70K/core to 150K/core - I'm talking a 4-core or 8-core system with only medium size memory!).
Postscript To answer the last comment
Actually what I write about most is peeling away the IBM marketing veneer
to reveal the true facts about performance and IBM's outrageous pricing claims. Whistle blowers like me are always attacked, I realize that. There
have been very few corrections to my factual postings, and I have posted LOTS of factual corrections to IBM's marketing errors. I can't believe the things IBM has told customers as well! Really when the facts come out IBM loses business.
Interesting that as you say any IBM customer knows the future direction,
well I'm pointing out what they actually deliver now. I'm sure everything gets fixed in the future.
I spend my work life working very hard to make things even better for Sun. I write in my blog about correcting the insanity I see others say in public.
Thursday Nov 15, 2007
no STREAM Bandwidth p570 power6 results
no TPC-H single-system Power6 results
no SPECweb2005 Power6 results
<16-Nov: line deleted due to correction, see note below>
no SPECjAppServer2004 Power6 as database server
No SPECmail Power6 results
no SPECompL2001 Power6 results
no Lotus Domino R6iNotes Power6 results
no cryptography performance on Power6 results
no power-performance on any published benchmarks
no consolidation overheads on Power6, (Solaris Zones=~0%)
etc.
What does the industry get - the most expensive core now built and a bogus press release chip bandwidth number: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/finally_proof_power6_has_meaningless
I don't even think the Power6 has a single-chip world record on
anything that everyone publishes?
...without even going into HPC ISV results (err, lack thereof)
no Fluent Power6 results
no StarCD Power6 results
no LSDyna Power6 results
no MSC.Nastran Power6 results
etc.
If it was as fast and IBM claims in marketing wouldn't IBM just do the ones they
haven't done? Also why can't they beat the UltraSPARC T2 world records on the ones they publish?
"You won't know, know, know..." -Amy Winehouse
SPEC, SPECint, SPECweb, SPECfp, SPECjAppServer, SPECmail, SPEComp, reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. TPC-H, QphH, $/QphH tm of Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). More info http://www.tpc.org.
Lotus Domino more info: www.notesbench.org
Postscript Note:
The original posting had an error. IBM did publish a SPECjAppserver2004 benchmark on Power6.
The comparison is: One Sun T5220 server (single UltraSPARC T2 chip) demonstrated 67% better performance over the IBM result of 1197.51 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard which used 4-core IBM p570 with 4.7GHz POWER6 processors. The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 used as Application server has 3.8x better power-performance and has 7.3x better SWaP than the IBM p570 power6. Enterprise T5120 used as database servrer has 3.4 better power-performance and has 13.5x better SWaP as the IBM p550.
Disclosure Statement:
SPECjAppServer2004 1 Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (8 cores, 1 chip) and 1 Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 (8 cores, 1 chip) 2000.92 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard. 1 IBM p570 (4 cores, 2 chips) and 1 IBM p550 (4 cores, 2 chips) 1197.51 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard. SPEC, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 10/10/2007.
Thursday Nov 08, 2007
Even IBM expert blogs continue to trumpet bad data. In the
previous posting I pointed out the problems, please see BM Seer's
"IBM JS22 Power6 blades not the performance you think"
While, I realize that over-excited IBM marketing types may tend to overstate and make
bad claims, but IBM's performance blog expert too?
IBM's Stahl writes:
Equally compelling is the analysis that one rack of IBM's new POWER6 processor-based blades is so powerful when virtualized that it can replace many non-virtualized racks of Sun's latest V490 servers, potentially saving a ton in energy costs.
Interesting that in a previous posting she complained of an HP comparison
because they used their own test. In the IBM JS22 comparison, IBM comes
up with their own baseless 'Sun is three times worse' derating factor.
I guess IBM uses something learned from Lucy in Peanuts cartoon:
"If you can't be right, .... be wrong at the top of your voice!"
So in how many more blogs, ads, and other marketing material will we
see this comparison? My guess is LOTS at the top of their voice!
Thursday Nov 08, 2007
Why do I attack IBM alot, it is not because they are a
competitor (I don't attack all competitors), it is because IBM
continues to pull such funny games to confuse the marketplace.
Here is a prime example of an un-fair/stilted comparisons from IBM press release:
Calculations show that one rack of IBM's new POWER6 processor-based blades is so powerful when virtualized that it can replace 23 non-virtualized racks of Sun's latest V490 servers, potentially saving more than $200,000 per year in energy costs alone. (3)
Why didn't IBM compare against the Sun Blade T6320 (UltraSPARC T2) blades?
IBM would have lost if they properly compared to Sun.
IBM gamed again by comparing new servers to older Sun servers.
IBM claimed one rack of JS22 BladeCenter Hs to replace 180 V490s.
IBM based its JS22 claim by 'pulling a a *3X* utilization rate"
out of the air' when compared to the V490. The
JS22 utilization was 60%, while the V490 was 20% utilized--
a report from Alinean Consulting was cited as the source
for the utilization comparisons(note:I guess you can pay for anything). This was the same fake
3x difference in utilization that IBM tryed to pull in the POWER6 announcement
that BM Seer shot down in "IBM rewrites history, OK footnotes to clearly show bogus calculations"
As a reminder as always with IBM read written material very carefully:
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/careful_reading_shows_a_lot
Here is the IBM footnote:
(3) The number of IBM BladeCenter JS22 servers required to replace 180 Sun Fire V490 was calculated based on SPECint_rate2006 results. The V490 SPECint_rate2006 result is for a 2.1GHz system with 4 chips and 2 cores per chip. It has a result of 78.0. The V490 result can be found at www.spec.org. It is current as of October 23, 2007. The JS22 result for the same benchmark is for a 4.0GHz system with 2 chips and 2 cores per chip. It has a result of 84.7. That result was submitted on November 6, 2007. It will also be posted on www.spec.org. The cumulative capacity of these servers is estimated to be the SPECint_rate2006 result for one server multiplied by the number of servers. A virtualization factor of 3X was applied to the JS22 virtualization scenario using utilizations derived from studies conducted by Alinean available at http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/cio/optimize/opt_wp_ibm_systemp.pdf. That is the utilization rate for the non-virtualized V490 is estimated to be 20% and the utilization rate for the virtualized JS22 is estimated to be 60%. Using these assumptions, the cumulative capacity of the 56 JS22 servers at 60% is greater than the cumulative capacity of the 180 V490 servers at 20% utilization.
|
|
|
|
so you dont think that either of those specificati...
That the Sun Niagara servers are cheaper and faste...
Yes, these are list prices. They are very expensi...
Ok, so these list prices are not the actual prices...
Sure these are list prices, compare to other's lis...