Linpack Benchmark: Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 Beats IBM POWER6

Friday Jul 13, 2007

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 has topped the performance of the brand new 4.7GHz POWER6 based p570. The Sun Studio 12 Compilers, Solaris 10, and Sun Performance Library played a key role in obtaining this performance.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 outperforms the best published POWER6 based system from IBM p570 by over 12% on the Linpack benchmark (Highly Parallel Computing). As a reminder IBM cores costs lots more than any other vendor, so you can't just look at perf/core. Compare systems of similar pricing and configuration.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 tops the HP Itanium 2 rx8640 system by 40% on the Linpack HPC benchmark.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000, using Sun Studio 12 delivered a score of 268.6 GFLOPS on the Linpack HPC benchmark.

Funny I read an IBM blog that said all was quiet for them in benchmarks, Sun decided to keep working during the summer , and I almost can't keep going on my regular job, because this blogging hobby is keeping me busy because so many of my friends in the benchmarking group are producing so many great results on Sun systems!

LINPACK HPC Performance Chart - GFLOPS (bigger is better)

System	GFLOPS		Processors
	Total	Peak	paralellism	chips,cores	Type	GHz
Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000	1032.0	1228.8	128	64,128	SPARC64 VI	2.4
Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000	268.6	307.2	32	16,32	SPARC64 VI	2.4
Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000	255.3	291.84	32	16,32	SPARC64 VI	2.28
IBM p570	239.4	300.8	16	8,16	POWER6	4.7
HP rx8640	192.4	204.8	32	16,32	Itanium 2	1.6

Benchmark Description

The Linpack benchmark suite measures the performance for factoring and solving a dense set of linear equations in double-precision floating-point.

The Linpack HPC benchmark allows the solution of any size matrix with a single right hand side. It was developed to allow vendors to show off their hardware. Because big problems allow for peak performance potentials, the benchmark is seen as an upper bound of potential performance of a machine. The run rules are much more flexible. The solution technique must use a pivoting scheme and the driver must follow the spirit of the Linpack 1000 or Linpack 100 benchmarks.

Disclosure Statement:

Linpack HPC, results from http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/index.html as of 07/13/07. Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 (SPARC64 VI @2.4, 16 chips, 32 cores), 268.6 GFLOPS. IBM p570 (POWER6 4.7GHz, 8 chips, 16 cores) 239.4 GFLOPS. HP rx8640 (Itanium 2 1.6GHz/24MB, 16 chips, 32 cores), 192.4 GFLOPS. Linpack Benchmark Performance Report

Results Summary

Published Results
	Performance:		268.6 GFLOPS
System:			Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000, 256GB
Total Number Processors:			16
Processor/GHz of Server:			SPARC64 VI, 2.4 GHz
Operating System:			Solaris 10
Compiler:			Sun Studio 12

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Posted at 02:08PM Jul 13, 2007 by BM Seer in Benchmarks
Tags: hpc linpack m8000 performance sun

Sun's Delivered Memory Bandwidth Leadership: Stream Benchmark

Wednesday Apr 18, 2007

Sun has faster delivered memory bandwidth than the best that IBM or HP can do. The Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 beat IBM p5 595 by 10% on Stream TRIAD benchmark. The Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 beat the HP Integrity Superdome by 33% on Stream TRIAD benchmark. The Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000, running with 2.4GHz SPARC64 VI processors, delivered a Stream TRIAD benchmark result of 227.1GB/s.

Don't let the core count confuse you, IBM cores cost over twice Sun's cores. Look at the other benchmark results posted to see that IBM costs more, is slower, and has fewer cores - but it is the best IBM that offers.

Be careful to compare measured/delivered bandwidth, other vendors sometimes try to confuse with peaks.

Stream Performance Chart - GB/s (1 MB=10^9 B, *not* 2^x B, bigger is better)

System	GHz	cores	COPY	SCALE	ADD	TRIAD
Sun SE M9000	2.4	128	224.4	223.1	224.2	227.1
IBM p5 595	2.3	64	186.1	179.6	200.4	206.2
HP Integrity SuperDome	1.6	128	154.5	153.0	169.5	170.8
HP Integrity SuperDome	1.6	64	116.1	114.6	127.9	128.7
Sun SE M9000	2.4	64	114.9	114.6	130.0	134.4
IBM p5-575	2.2	8	77.9	81.2	96.7	100.5
Sun SE M8000	2.4	32	60.3	60.2	69.3	69.6
Sun SE M5000	2.15	16	24.8	24.8	25.2	25.3
Sun SE M4000	2.15	8	12.6	12.5	12.7	12.7

Benchmark Description

The STREAM benchmark is a simple synthetic benchmark program that measures sustainable memory bandwidth (in MB/s) for simple vector kernels. All memory accesses are sequential, so a picture of how fast regular data can be moved through the system is portrayed. Properly run, the benchmark displays the characteristics of the memory system of the machine and not the advantages of running from the systems memory caches.

STREAM counts how many bytes that were read plus how many bytes that were written. For the simple "Copy" kernel, this is exactly twice the number obtained from the "bcopy" convention. STREAM does this because three of the four kernels do arithmetic, so it makes sense to count both the data read into the CPU and the data written back from the CPU. The "Copy" kernel does no arithmetic, but for consistency, counts bytes the same way as the other three.

The sequential nature of the memory references is the benchmark's biggest weakness. The benchmark does not expose limitations in a system's interconnect to move data from anywhere in the system to anywhere.

Disclosure Statement:

Stream is a publically available benchmark and can be found at http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream. Results as of 4/13/07.

System Configuration

Systems under test:

• Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000
• 64 x 2.4GHz SPARC64 VI processors
• 1TB memory
• Solaris 10
• Sun Studio 12

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Posted at 02:52PM Apr 18, 2007 by BM Seer in Benchmarks
Tags: bandwidth m8000 m9000 memory stream

Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 SPARC64 VI on SAP SD standard SAP ERP 2005 application benchmark

Tuesday Apr 17, 2007

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 (16 processors, 32 cores, 64 threads) set a World Record for the SAP-SD 2-Tier Standard Application benchmark for systems with 16 or fewer processors as of 04/16/07. The 16-way Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 with 2.4 GHz SPARC64 VI processors achieved 7300 users on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) standard SAP ERP 2005 application benchmark.

Effective 08/31/06 a new SAP R/3 version (ECC 6.0) and kernel (7.00) is requiredto run the SAP-SD 2-Tier benchmark. The new version is a bit more heavy-weight than the previous version (ECC 5.0), and has a performance impact of 2-3%.

You can see more on the Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 and other new SPARC64 VI servers at: http://www.sun.com/launch/2007-0417/feature.jsp. Sun is not making customers move -- UltraSPARC IV is still doing great actually FANTASTIC -- but as always Sun is providing customers with a choice. Keep checking back for more SPARC64 VI and UltraSPARC IV+ benchmarks.

SAP-SD 2-Tier Performance Table (in decreasing performance order)

System	OS Database	Users	SAP ERP/ECC Release	SAPS	SAPS/ Proc	Date
Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 16xSPARC64 VIV+ @2.4GHz 256 GB	Solaris 10 Oracle 10g	7300	2005 6.0	36,570	2,285	17-Apr-07
Sun Fire E6900 24xUS-IV+ @1.95GHz 96 GB	Solaris 10 Oracle 10g	6160	2005 6.0	30,820	1,284	03-Apr-07
HP Integrity Superdome-16 16xDual-Core Intel Itanium 2 @1.6GHz 256 GB	Windows Server 2003 DE SQL Server 2005	5600	2005 6.0	28,200	1,762	18-Dec-06
IBM p5 570 16xPOWER5+ @2.2GHz 128 GB	AIX 5.3 DB2 UDB 8.2.2	5520	2004 5.0	27,670	1,729	25-Jul-06
Fuitsu PRIMEQUEST 480 32xIntel Itanium 2 @1.6GHz 256 GB	SuSE LES9 Oracle 9i	5000	2004 5.0	25,050	783	11-May-06
Unisys Enterprise Server Model ES7000/one 16xDual-Core Intel Itanium 2 @1.6GHz 256 GB	Windows Server 2003 DE SQL Server 2005	4884	2005 6.0	24,570	1,536	19-Dec-06

SAP ERP 2005 application benchmark (SAP ECC 6.0) is a bit more heavy-weight than mySAP ERP 2004 (SAP ECC 5.0), which has a performance impact of ~2-3%.

Disclosure Statement:

Two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) standard SAP ERP 2004/2005 application benchmark: Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 (16-way, 16 processors, 32 cores, 64 threads) 16 x 2.4 GHz SPARC64 VI, 256GB memory, 7,300 SD benchmark users, 1.98 sec. avg. response time, Cert#2007026, Oracle 10g database, Solaris 10; Sun Fire E6900 (24-way, 24 processors, 48 cores, 48 threads) 24 x 1.95 GHz UltraSPARC IV+, 96GB memory, 6,160 SD benchmark users, 1.99 sec. avg. response time, Cert#2007023, Oracle 10g database, Solaris 10; HP Integrity Superdome-16 (16-way, 16 processors, 32 cores, 64 threads) 16 x 1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 9050, 256GB memory, 5,600 SD benchmark users, 1.91s avg resp time, Cert#2006090, SQL Server 2005, Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition; Unisys Enterprise Server Model ES7000/one (16-way, 16 processors, 32 cores, 64 threads) 16 x 1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 9050, 256GB memory, 4,884 SD benchmark users, 1.93s avg resp time, Cert#2006091, SQL Server 2005, Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition; IBM System p5 570 (16-way, 16 processors, 16 cores, 32 threads) 16 x 2.2 GHz POWER5+, 128 GB memory, 5,520 SD benchmark users, 1.97s avg resp time, Cert#2006044, DB2 UDB 8.2.2, AIX 5.3; Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 480 (32-way, 32 procs, 32 cores, 32 threads) 32 x 1.6 GHz Intel Itanium 2, 256 GB memory, 5,000 SD benchmark users, 1.97s avg resp time, Cert#2006023, Oracle 9i, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9; SAP, R/3, mySAP reg TM of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. More info www.sap.com/benchmark.

Results Summary

Fujitsu has submitted results for the SAP-SD 2-Tier benchmark.

Certified Results
	Performance:		7,300 benchmark users
	Server:		Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000
	Processors:		16 x 2.4 GHz SPARC64 VI
	Memory:		256 GB
	Operating system:		Solaris 10
	Database S/W:		Oracle 10g
	SAP S/W:		SAP ECC 6.0
	SAP Certification:		#2007026
Storage:			Sun StorageTek 6140

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Posted at 12:01PM Apr 17, 2007 by BM Seer in Benchmarks
Tags: m8000 sap-sd sparc sparc64