NEW 1.4GHz Sun Fire T2000 sets World Record 2-Node SPECjAppServer

Tuesday Jan 09, 2007

The new 1.4GHz Sun Fire T2000 achieved 801.70 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS and beats the HP Itanium-2 rx3600 two-node result of 618.22 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS by 29%. This is the dual-core 1.6GHz Itanium2!

The T2000 result also beats the IBM two-node result using the p5 505Q and p5 550 of 618.38 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard by 29%.

One Sun Fire T2000 server equipped with one 1.4GHz UltraSPARC T1 running BEA Weblogic 9.2 Advantage Edition and one Sun Fire T2000 equipped with a UltraSPARC T1 processor at 1.0 GHz running IBM DB2 8.2.6 delivered a result of 801.70 JOPS@Standard for best performance of single socket servers in the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark.

IBM POWER5+ and Itanium2 Dual-cores also take a lot more power and space:

When compared to HP's rx4640 equipped with Itanium2 and running Linux, the T2000 delivers nearly 1.5X higher performance in 4x less power and half the space, delivering over 6X higher performance per watt and 12x SWaP.

The Sun Fire T2000 delivers nearly 1.3X higher performance in nearly 3x less power and half the space, resulting in nearly 3.5X higher performance per watt and 7x SWaP when compared to HP's rx3600 equipped with two of the latest dual core Itanium2 processors and running HP-UX11i.

This result highlights the performance benefits of the latest BEA Weblogic Server 9.2 release on Sun Fire servers. It also shows the best way to get superior performance on IBM DB2 software is to use the Sun T2000 server.

This benchmark result demonstrates that the Sun Fire T2000 running the Solaris 10 Operating system can support thousands of concurrent users accessing Web Services applications.

SPECjAppServer2004 Performance Chart - JOPS@Standard
c/c = cores/chip.

	JOPS@ Standard	J2EE Server	App SW	DB Server	DB SW
Sun	801.70	1 x Sun Fire T2000 1.4GHz US-T1 8 core/1 chip (8 c/c)	BEA WebLogic 9.2	1 x Sun Fire T2000 1.0GHz US-T1 6 core/1 chips (6 c/c)	IBM DB2 8.2.6
IBM	618.38	1 x IBM p505Q 1.65GHz POWER5+ 4 core/2 chips (2 c/c)	IBM WebSphere 6.1	1 x IBM p550 2.1GHz POWER5+ 4 cores/2 chips (2 c/c)	IBM DB2 8.2
HP	618.22	1 x HP rx3600 1.6GHz Itanium2 4 core/2 chip (2 c/c)	BEA WebLogic 9.2	1 x HP rx4640 1.6GHz Itanium2 4 core/4 chip (1 c/c)	Oracle 10g
Sun	615.64	1 x Sun Fire T2000 1.2GHz US-T1 8 core/1 chip (8 c/c)	BEA WebLogic 9.0	1 x Sun Fire V490 1.5GHz US-IV+ 8 core/4 chips (2 c/c)	Oracle 10g 10.1.0.4
HP	542.17	1 x rx4640 1.6GHz Itanium2 4 core/4 chip (1 c/c)	BEA WebLogic 9.1	1 x rx4640 1.6GHz Itanium2 4 core/4 chip (1 c/c)	Oracle 10g 10.1.0.4
IBM	404.88	1 x p5 505 2.1GHz POWER5+ 2 cores/1 chip (2 c/c)	IBM WebSphere V6.1	1 x p4 505Q 1.65GHz POWER5+ 4 core/2 chips (2 c/c)	IBM DB2 v8.2

SPECjAppServer2004 Results Page

Benchmark Description

SPECjAppServer2004 (Java Application Server) is a multi-tier benchmark for measuring the performance of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology-based application servers. SPECjAppServer2004 is an end-to-end application which exercises all major J2EE technologies implemented by compliant application servers as follows:

• The web container, including servlets and JSPs
• The EJB container
• EJB2.0 Container Managed Persistence
• JMS and Message Driven Beans
• Transaction management
• Database connectivity

Moreover, SPECjAppServer2004 also heavily exercises all parts of the underlying infrastructure that make up the application environment, including hardware, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers, and the system network.

The primary metric of the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark is jAppServer Operations Per Second (JOPS) which is calculated by adding the metrics of the Dealership Management Application in the Dealer Domain and the Manufacturing Application in the Manufacturing Domain. There is NO price/performance metric in this benchmark.

Disclosure Statement:

SPECjAppServer2004 Sun Fire T2000 (8 cores, 1 chip) 801.70 JOPS@Standard. SPECjAppServer2004 IBM p5 505Q (4 cores, 2 chips) 618.38 JOPS@Standard. SPECjAppServer2004 HP rx4600 (4 cores, 4 chip) 542.18 JOPS@Standard. SPECjAppServer2004 IBM p5 505 (2 cores, 1chip) 404.88 JOPS@Standard. SPECjAppServer2004 HP rx3600 (4 cores, 2 chips) 618.22 JOPS@Standard.
SPEC, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. All results from www.spec.org as of 01/09/07.
HP rx4640 server specifications 10/19/05 from http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/integrity/entry_level/rx4640/
HP rx4640 power rating of 1,303 watts taken from HP Enterprise Configurator 10/19/05 from http://h30099.www3.hp.com/configurator/catalog-hpintegrity.asp. System configured with Redundant Power, 4 x 1.6GHz Itanium processors, 8 x 2GB DIMMs, 0 x PCI cards and 2 x 73GB HDDs.
IBM specifications from Fact and Features report, 1/9/06: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_sp/n/PSB01628USEN/PSB01628USEN.PDF. IBM power is based on the reported maximum power consumption.
HP rx3600 power consumption estimated by taking 70% of the maximum output power supply rating reported here on 11/14/06: http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/cache/387834-0-0-225-121.html
Sun Fire T2000 server power consumption taken from measurements made during the benchmark run.

Certified Result in a two-system configuration:

• Certified Result: 801.70 JOPS@Standard
• Reference Date: Jan 9, 2007

Application Server:

• Sun Fire T2000:
• one 1.4 GHz 8-core UltraSPARC T1
• 64 GB memory (16x4GB)
• Solaris 10 11/06
• BEA WebLogic 9.2 Advantage Edition
• JVM J2SE 5.0 Update 10

Database Server:

• Sun Fire T2000:
• one 1.0 GHz 6-core UltraSPARC T1 processor
• 8 GB memory
• 2x Sun StorEdge SE3320 SCSI Array
• Solaris 10 6/06
• IBM DB2 Universal Database v8.2.6

Yet again, Sun UltraSPARC IV+ beats IBM POWER5+

Wednesday Dec 13, 2006

Sun Fire E6900 UltraSPARC IV+ beats the IBM p5 570 POWER5+ on SPECjbb2005. Why haven't we seen any more POWER5+ performance benchmarks on workloads like this? Might be the weaknesses we've been talking about when looking at other benchmarks?

The Sun Fire E6900 with US-IV+ maintained price/performance leadership on the SPECjbb2005 server-side Java benchmark. The 16-way Sun Fire E6900 (32 Procs Avail to Java) with 1.8GHz US-IV+ processors outperformed the 16-way IBM P5 570 (32 Procs Avail to Java) with 2.2 GHz POWER5+ processors by 5%.

SPECjbb2005 Performance Chart (ordered by performance, bops: SPECjbb2005 Business Operations per Second, where bigger is better)
Ch/Co/Thr: Chips, Cores, Threads

System	Processors			Performance
	Ch/Co/Thr	GHz	Type	bops	JVMs	bops/JVM
SGI Altix 4700	16/32/32	1.6	Itanium 2	471,030	8	58,879
SGI Altix 3700	32/32/32	1.6	Itanium 2	457,598	16	28,600
Fujitsu PP1500	32/32/32	2.16	SPARC64 V	361,920	8	45,161
Sun Fire E6900	16/32/32	1.8	US-IV+	343,512	16	21,470
Sun Fire E6900	24/48/48	1.5	US-IV+	342,578	12	28,548
IBM p5-570	8/16/32	2.2	POWER5+	326,651	8	40,831
Fujitsu PQ480	32/32/32	1.6	Itanium 2	322,719	8	40,340
Fujitsu PQ480	32/32/32	1.6	Itanium 2	295,161	1	295,161
Sun Fire E6900	16/32/32	1.5	US-IV+	248,075	8	31,009
IBM p5-570	8/16/32	1.9	POWER5	244,361	8	30,545
Sun Fire E6900	16/32/32	1.5	US-IV+	241,560	8	30,195
IBM p5-560Q	8/16/32	1.5	POWER5+	226,291	8	28,286
IBM p5-570	8/16/32	1.9	POWER5	224,200	1	224,200

Complete benchmark results may be found at the SPEC benchmark website http://www.spec.org.

SPECjbb2005 (Java Business Benchmark) measures the performance of a Java implemented application tier (server-side Java). The benchmark is based on the order processing in a wholesale supplier application. The performance of the user tier and the database tier are not measured in this test. The metrics given are number of SPECjbb2005 bops (Business Operations per Second) and SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM (bops per JVM instance).

Results Summary

Certified Results
	Performance:		343,512 SPECjbb2005 bops
			24,470 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM
	Reference Date:		December 6, 2006
Systems:			Sun Fire E6900
Total # Processors:			16
Processor/GHz:			US-IV+ 1.8 GHz
Operating System:			Solaris 10
JVM:			Java HotSpot(TM) 32-Bit, Version 1.6.0

Disclosure Statement:

SPECjbb2005 Sun Fire E6900 (16-way, 16 chips, 32 cores, 1.8 GHz) 343,512 SPECjbb2005 bops, 21,470 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM submitted for review, IBM eServer p5 570 (8 chips, 16 cores, 16-way, 2.2 GHz) 326,651 SPECjbb2005 bops, 20,415 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM. SPEC, SPECjbb reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results as of 12/06/06 on www.spec.org. Prices based on publicly documented list prices. SPECjbb2005 Benchmark Reports