Tuesday Oct 09, 2007
Today, Sun submitted the SPECint_rate2006 and SPECfp_rate2006
Single-Chip World Records on the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220.
What are these servers? UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz servers that you will
hear loads more on today.
The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 is the 1RU version, and the
Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 is the 2RU version, both of these
servers are electronically equivalent with the 2RU having a bit more
connectivity and storage if you need.
The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server, running at 1.4 GHz, beat all single-chip results running SPECint_rate2006 with a result of 78.5.
The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server beats the best single IBM 4.7 GHz dual-core POWER6 processor result by 29% and beat the best published single
3 GHz Xeon quad-core by 28% on SPECint_rate2006. There are no single quad-core Opteron results published for SPECint_rate2006.
"but I've heard there is no floating point on Niagara processors 
Nay, the 1.4GHz UltraSPARC T2 in the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server, beat
all single-chip results running SPECfp_rate2006 with a result of 62.3.
The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server beat the best single IBM 4.7 GHz
POWER6 processor based system result by 7% and beats the best published
single 3 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon by 61% for SPECfp_rate2006.
There are no single quad-core Opteron results published for SPECfp_rate2006.
SPEC CPU2006 Performance Charts -
bigger is better, selected recent results,
please see
www.spec.org for complete results.
SPECint_rate2006
| System |
Procs |
Perf Results |
| Type |
GHz |
Chips
Cores |
Threads |
Peak |
Base |
| T5120/T5220 |
UltraSPARC T2 |
1.4 |
1, 8 |
64 |
78.5 |
73.0 |
| HP DL380 G5 |
Intel X5365 |
3.0 |
1, 4 |
4 |
61.3 |
53.8 |
| IBM p 570 |
Power6 |
4.7 |
1, 2 |
4 |
60.9 |
53.2 |
| Fujitsu RX300 |
Intel X5355 |
2.66 |
1,4 |
4 |
52.8 |
50.5 |
SPECfp_rate2006
| System |
Processors |
Performance Results |
| Type |
GHz |
Chips, Cores |
Threads |
Peak |
Base |
| T5120/T5220 |
UltraSPARC T2 |
1.4 |
1, 8 |
64 |
62.3 |
57.9 |
| IBM p 570 |
Power6 |
4.7 |
1, 2 |
4 |
58.0 |
51.5 |
| HP DL380 G5 |
Intel X5365 |
3.0 |
1, 4 |
4 |
38.8 |
36.4 |
| Fujitsu RX300 |
Intel X5355 |
2.66 |
1, 4 |
4 |
37.5 |
36.2 |
Results as of 27 Sep 2007 from www.spec.org.
Benchmark Description
SPEC CPU2006 is made up of two suites of benchmarks, CFP2006 and
CINT2006. CFP2006 targets floating-point performance, while CINT2006
targets integer performance.
Each suite has two different measures. First is the CPU measure, which
is the performance on the suite as a single stream. This can be either
a single thread or automatic compiled parallel run. This measure is
further defined by base and optimized runs. Base uses the same compiler
flags for all kernels, where optimized is allowed to use different
compiler flags for each kernel. Results are compared against a baseline
system run that was standardized by SPEC.
The second measure is Rate. It is a measure of how many CPU measures
can be run at a time. Typically, it is run as n processes on n
processors. It shows how well the same job mix can run on a system
under some load. It also is run as a base and optimized set of
results.
Disclosure Statement:
SPEC, SPECint reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.
Sun result submitted to SPEC, other results from www.spec.org as of 9/27/07.
Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220/T5120 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores),
78.5 SPECint_rate2006, IBM p570 (POWER6, 1 chip, 2 cores), 60.9 SPECint_rate2006, HP DL380 G5 (X5365, 1 chip, 4 cores), 61.3 SPECint_rate2006,
Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores),
62.3 SPECfp_rate2006.
SPEC, SPECfp reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.
Sun result submitted to SPEC, other results from www.spec.org as of 9/27/07.
Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220/T5120 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores),
62.3 SPECfp_rate2006.
IBM p570 (POWER6, 1 chip, 2 cores), 58.0 SPECfp_rate2006,
Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores),
62.3 SPECfp_rate2006.
HP DL380 G5 (X5365, 1 chip, 4 cores), 38.8 SPECfp_rate2006.
System Configuration
| Results |
| Reference Date: |
|
Oct 09, 2007 |
| System: |
|
Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220 |
| Processor: |
|
Sun UltraSPARC T2, 1.4 GHz |
|
|
|
78.5 SPECint_rate2006 |
|
|
|
62.3 SPECfp_rate2006 |
| Software: |
|
Solaris 10, Sun Studio 12 Compiler |
Thursday Sep 20, 2007
In a video, Prof. David Patterson opines on UltraSPARC T2 and how Sun's CMT
has some very fresh ideas to move the industry forward on practical
computing. He talks about the Old-fashioned and out-dated concepts of "peak" or "clock speed" and the need to look at delivered performance.
here, here!!!
He shows that the UltraSPARC T2 out of box is almost 1.5x to 2x faster
than Clovertown(quad-core) & Opteron and three to four times the
watt/performance advantage. In addition, he says the UltraSPARC T2 is
the easiest to program and auto-tune.
He did conceded that if you look at the archaic (he used the word
"old-fashioned") 20th century metrics of peak and clock that the
UltraSPARC T2 is 2x to 7x slower -- but he (like I) focus on delivered
performance.
David Patterson is a Professor in Computer Science at Univ of
California Berkeley. David and John Hennessy (Stanford University)
wrote the textbook "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach Fourth Edition"
AFTERNOTE #1
To respond the the comment below (comments are now closed). I'm sure the professor will give us more details and comparison of floating-point performance on important applications between the UltraSPARC T2 and the various X64 architectures, he's very complete and thoughtful.
In terms of other comparisons. There are cpu benchmarks (int & fp) comparisons that were done at UltraSPARC T2 launch, best chip in several comparisons. There will probably be more
even results before long on commercial benchmarks.
AFTERNOTE #2
Wednesday Aug 29, 2007
There is more preliminary UltraSPARC T2 performance is blogged about at:
http://blogs.sun.com/jmeyer/entry/power6_goes_thud_part_v
Where John states:
And IBM knows that next quarter, Sun will be introducing systems based on the new UltraSPARC T2, the world's first true system-on-a-chip and the world's fastest microprocessor. Preliminary estimates on one popular benchmark show that a single rack of UltraSPARC T2-based systems will outperform four racks of 4.7GHz POWER6-based p5 570s (more on that as we get closer to system announcement). No kidding.
I haven't seen this internal info yet, but I'll try to dig it up. Looking
at other tests, I believe this one.
...John also talks more about the lagging IBM POWER6 rollout.
Thursday Aug 23, 2007
In the last posting we showed Oracle Database with SAP-SD benchmarks all
running on a Sun Fire T2000. As Sun has been saying since Day one of CMT.
Major databases are perfectly matched for UltraSPARC T1. By the way Sun
has also used Open source databases on benchmarks as well.
We have lots of customers deploying RDBMS on UltraSPARC T1 and planning
on UltraSPARC T2 servers. It really works well even though competitors
and doubters want to try to say it is special purpose, sorry it isn't.
Here is an opinion:
"Now Sun's T2 is out and it's pretty much the world beater they promised -
30% faster on SPEC throughput than IBM's 4.7 Ghz Dual core Power6 and,
more significantly, one third the cost and somewhere between two and three
times the throughput of the Itanium. ... anyone still buying HP-UX and
Itanium after Rock comes out will be doing it because they hate Sun and are
quietly hoping for a miracle, just as DEC's partisans (and HP's own MPE
customer base) did before them." -- zdnet's Paul Murphy
Source: "A Dumb prediction: IBM will Buy HP's Unix Customers," By Paul Murphy, zdnet, 08/17/07,
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=941
Thursday Aug 23, 2007
The SPARC Enterprise Model T2000 | Sun Fire Model T2000 is the performance leader in Two-Tier SAP-SD Standard Application Benchmarks on single processor systems as of August 22nd, 2007. This result used the Oracle database on the UltraSPARC T1. Again as Sun has always maintained the UltraSPARC T1 is good at database-tier, application tier, and web tier!
- Sun Fire Model T2000 supported 1100 SD Benchmark Users, 5530 SAPS, using Oracle 10g is the fastest single-processor systems.
- Sun Fire Model T2000 beats a 2-chip dual-core Itanium2-based HP Integrity rx2660.
- Sun Fire Model T2000 beats a 2-chip dual-core Opteron-based HP ProLiant DL365.
- Sun Fire Model T2000 beats a 2-chip dual-core Xeon-based Fujitsu BFi20 S2 (Unicode).
- The Fujitsu BX620 S4 that uses two-chip 3GHz Xeon Quad-cores is only 1.8x faster than a single chip Sun Fire Model T2000 using UltraSPARC T1.
- The IBM p570 that uses two-chip 4.7GHz POWER6 is only 1.8x faster than a single chip Sun Fire Model T2000 using UltraSPARC T1.
- The just-announced UltraSPARC T2 has twice the thread count of the
UltraSPARC T1.
SAP-SD 2-Tier Performance, Benchmark Users (bigger is better)
| Sys |
Users |
# / GHz / Type |
Mem |
OS |
DB |
LI/Hr |
SAPS |
BM rev |
Date |
| IBM p570 |
2035 |
two 4.7 POWER6+ DC |
32 GB |
AIX 5L 5.3 |
Oracle 10g |
203,670 |
10,180 |
6.0 |
5/21/07 |
| Fujitsu BX620 S4 |
1940 |
two 3.0 Xeon QC |
32 GB |
Windows Srvr 2003 EE |
SQL Server 2005 |
194,000 |
9,700 |
6.0 |
8/13/07 |
| Sun Fire T2000 |
1100 |
one 1.4 US T1 |
64 GB |
Solaris 10 |
Oracle 10g |
110,670 |
5,530 |
6.0 |
8/22/07 |
| HP Integrity rx2660 |
1090 |
two 1.6 Itan2 DC |
32 GB |
HP-UX 11iV3 |
DB2 9 |
109,670 |
5,480 |
6.0 |
3/20/07 |
| HP ProLiant DL365 |
1083 |
two 2.8 Opt DC |
32 GB |
Windows Srvr 2003 EE |
SQL Srvr 2005 |
108,670 |
5,430 |
6.0 |
2/9/07 |
| Fujitsu BFi20 S2 Unicode |
1020 |
two 3 Xeon 5160 DC |
16 GB |
Solaris 10 |
Oracle 10g |
102,330 |
5,120 |
6.0 |
5/4/07 |
| IBM p550 |
1000 |
four 1.9 POWER5+ DC |
32 GB |
SuSE Linux ES9 |
DB2 UDB 8.2.2 |
100,330 |
5,020 |
5.0 |
10/04/05 |
| Sun Fire T2000 |
950 |
one 1.2 US T1 |
32 GB |
Solaris 10 |
MaxDB 7.5 |
95,670 |
4,780 |
5.0 |
11/17/05 |
| IBM x3250 |
850 |
one 2.13 Xeon |
8 GB |
Windows SrVr 2003 EE |
DB2 9 |
88,000 |
4,400 |
6.0 |
5/11/07 |
Complete benchmark results may be found at the SAP benchmark website http://www.sap.com/benchmark.
Benchmark Description
The SAP Standard Application SD (Sales and Distribution) Benchmark is a
two-tier ERP business test that is indicative of full business workloads
of complete order processing and invoice processing, and demonstrates the
ability to run both the application and database software on a single
system. The SAP Standard Application SD Benchmark represents the critical
tasks performed in real-world ERP business environments.
SAP is one of the premier world-wide ERP application providers, and maintains
a suite of benchmark tests to demonstrate the performance of competetive
systems on the various SAP products.
SAP has specified that the Benchmark Users metric is the only metric to be used
for public comparisons.
However, Benchmark Users can be traded off with response time in performance
tuning, and so comparing Line Items per Hour or SAPS
may be a different way to compare the actual power of systems.
Funny that Sun compares against current IBM results, IBM bloggers
decide to do funny comparisons on a different SAP benchmark, but
compared their latest system to a 16-month old result on a US-IV system
that is 2 processor GHz upgrades behind. I guess that is one way to win...
Disclosure Statement:
Two-tier SAP Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) standard SAP ERP 2004/2005 application benchmark:
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;
Sun Fire T2000 (1-way, 1 proc, 8 cores, 32 threads) 1 x 1.2 GHz
UltraSPARC T1, 32GB memory, 950 SD Benchmark users, 1.91 sec avg response time,
Cert#2005047., MaxDB 7.5 database, Solaris 10;
Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMERGY MOdel BX620 S4
(2-way, 2 procs, 8 cores, 8 threads), 2 x 3.0 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon,
32 GB memory, 1940 SD Benchmark users, 1.99 sec avg response time,
Cert#2007049, SQL Server 2005, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition;
HP ProLiant DL365 (2-way, 2 procs, 4 cores, 4 threads)
2 x 2.8 GHz Opteron, 32GB memory, 1083 SAP SD Benchmark users,
1.98 sec avg response time, Cert#2007006, SQL Server 2005,
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition;
HP Integrity rx2660 (2-way, 2 procs, 4 cores, 8 threads)
2 x 1.6 GHz Itanium, 32GB memory, 1090 SAP SD Benchmark users,
1.93 sec avg response time, Cert#2007016, DB2 9, HP-UX 11iV3;
IBM System p 570 (2-way, 2 procs, 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;
Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMERGY Model BFi20 S2 (2-way, 2 procs, 4 cores, 4 threads)
2 x 3GHz Intel Xeon 5160 dual-core, 16GB memory,(Unicode) 1020 SAP SD Benchmark users,
1.94 sec avg response time, Cert#2007031, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10;
IBM System x3250 (1-way, 1 proc, 4 cores, 4 threads) 1 x 2.13 GHz
Xeon, 8GB memory, 850 SD Benchmark users, 1.59s avg resp time, Cert#2007036,
DB2 9, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition;
IBM System eServer p5 550 (4-way, 4 procs, 4 cores, 8 threads) 4 x 1.9 GHz
POWER5+, 32GB memory, 1000 SD Benchmark users, 1.97s avg resp time, Cert#2005040,
IBM DB2 Universal Database 8.2.2, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9;
SAP, R/3, mySAP reg TM of SAP AG in Germany and other countries.
More info http://www.sap.com/benchmark.
| Certified Results |
|
Performance: |
|
1100 benchmark users |
|
Server: |
|
Sun Fire |
|
Processors: |
|
1 1.4 GHz UltraSPARC T1 |
|
Memory: |
|
64 GB |
|
Operating system: |
|
Solaris 10 |
|
Database S/W: |
|
Oracle 10g |
|
SAP S/W: |
|
SAP ECC 6.0 |
|
SAP Certification: |
|
2007051 |
|
Storage: |
|
Sun StorEdge 6020 |
Thursday Aug 09, 2007
Postscript:
Be careful when comparing performance results, as an example look at
a comment in yesterday's
"Can I use 64 threads in a chip?" posting. At
least this comment pointed out that you can use 4-8 threads in 2 chip Intel-based systems, but it was really trying to
be a stab at UltraSPARC Performance. Here was the comment:
One really needs to look at the complete data on those .pdf's
to make a fair comparison (also in the disclosure statement
below).
First: The T2000 SAP-SD used a 1.2GHz UltraSPARC T1, Sun now ships faster 1.4GHz UltraSPARC T1, and has announced 1.4GHz UltraSPARC T2. The 1.4GHz T2 has double the threads of that 1.4GHz (double the computational power).
Second: The T2000 SAP-SD result was submitted in Dec 2005, at that time it
was near the performance of the expensive 4-way POWER5 IBM p550.
Third: The 2-chip Dual-core Xeon SAP-SD result above was
submitted 18 months after the T2000 SAP-SD result.
Fourth: Different versions of the benchmark. The 2-chip
Dual-core Xeon was run with ECC 6.0 (not SAP 5.0). The a newer version
of the benchmark takes more computational work to produce the same results.
Dual-core SAP-SD result was also run with Solaris 10 on Xeon, how cool is that!
Fifth: The 2-chip quad-core Xeon SAP-SD result above was
submitted 19 months after the T2000 SAP-SD result.
Sixth: The Sun result used open-source MySQL MaxDB database,
how cool is that! The Xeon results used Oracle or MicroSoft SQL Server.
postscript:
Sun latter used Oracle, others suggested US T1 has some sort of silly database limitation - NOT TRUE!
You'll see more results soon.
Triffids, as a reminder if you work for a partner company of SAP you must
put the following disclosures when you post results. If you are not
they you don't need to put this in, but as you can see the data in
it would have allowed you to make a better comparison of systems.
Don't worry I'm not asking you to identify yourself at all.
Disclosure Statement:
Two-tier SAP ECC 5.0 Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark Sun Fire T2000 (1-way, 1 proc, 8 cores, 32 threads) 1x 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC T1, 32 GB mem, 950 SD benchmark users, 1.91 sec avg response time, Cert#2005047., MaxDB 7.5 database, Solaris 10; Two-tier SAP ECC 5.0 Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark IBM System eServer p5 550 (4-way, 4 procs, 4 cores, 8 threads) 4x 1.9 GHz POWER5+, 32GB mem, 1,000 SD benchmark users, 1.97s avg resp time, Cert#2005040, IBM DB2 Universal Database 8.2.2, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9;
Two-tier SAP ECC 6.0 Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMERGY Model BFi20 S2 (2 procs, 4 cores, 4 threads) 2x Intel Xeon 5160, 3.0 GHz, 16GB mem, 1,020 SD benchmark users, 1.94s avg resp time, Cert#2007031, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10;
Two-tier SAP ECC 6.0 Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMERGY Model TX300 S3 (2 procs, 8 cores, 8 threads) 4x Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor X5355 2.66 GHz, 32GB mem, 1865 SD benchmark users, 1.99s avg resp time, Cert#2007025, SQL Server 2005, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition; SAP, R/3, mySAP reg TM of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. More info www.sap.com/benchmark.
I edited in:
2 processors into Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor X5355 2.66 GHz
...and..
32 threads to the Sun Fire T2000, 1 processor / 8 cores
...in order to make the comparisons more consistent.
Wednesday Aug 08, 2007
Can someone really use 64-threads in a chip? The answer is simple,
when you look out into your datacenter do you see racks of servers
or just a single naked core sitting alone in the back corner?
If you see racks of server you are running lots and lots of threads.
Think of it his way, if you have a bunch of dual-core single-socket
1RU servers filling a rack you have around 80 threads in a rack, or
2-socket you have 160, or quad-core 2-socket you have 320 threads.
Now how would you judge performance of a single rack (with 80-320 threads)?
Would you run one copy of "gzip" or "tar" and compare that to your laptop and say that rack is slow, of course not., You'd run a whole bunch of them.
So when you are performance testing an UltraSPARC T1 or UltraSPARC T2
server throw lots of work at it and it will have no problem. There
is massive parallelism in every datacenter with racks of servers. Perfect for UltraSPARC T1/T2. Every datacenter with web-tiers, application-tiers,
and database behind those tiers runs tons of threads. And remember the
UltraSPARC T1 and introduction and even last week continues to set leading performance records at every tier.
Intelligence test Would you judge performance of an UltraSPARC T2 by running a single "gzip" or "tar"?
Wednesday Aug 08, 2007
Why does Sun designate yesterday's performance results as "estimates",
why that word? Did some Sun marketeer just throw a dart and just pick a big number. No. All
UltraSPARC T2 SPEC CPU and SPEC OMP metrics quoted are from full “reportable” runs,
but are nevertheless designated as “estimates” because they use
pre-production systems. Sun customer systems, to be announced later, are expected to perform similarly. SPEC rules do allow comparing
these preliminary scores and published result.
Is Sun the only vendor to use this clause? No. Intel and AMD have made
a long history of using preliminary numbers at chip announcements to get
the word out about their performance. Sun is just following their lead,
and trumping their performance
Ok, back to why the word "estimates?" The SPEC CPU committee voted
to use that specific word for preliminary scores. Members include
IBM, Intel, AMD, HP, .... And every employee of a member company must follow the rules.
By license agreement, SPEC members and customers agree to run and report results as specified in each benchmark suite's documentation.
from SPEC FAQ
Postings on Sun's UltraSPARC T2 performance:
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/performance_of_the_new_sun
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/ultrasparc_t2_more_floating_point
http://blogs.sun.com/sprack/entry/ultrasparc_t2_world_class_crypto
OpenSPARC T2:
http://blogs.sun.com/d/entry/ultrasparc_t2_documentation_available
Ubunu (aready booted on UltraSPARC T2):
Ubuntu & Canonical & UltraSPARC T1 (May06).
As a Sun employee I try my best to follow every rule when talking about results in public, but I'm an engineer so sometimes it is hard to follow all the legalese so I try to correct things as soon as I see an error. And I do my best to remind other Sun bloggers to put in the proper disclosure statement for SPEC & TPC benchmark results. Though quite
honestly I wish SPEC & TPC would streamline the rules, make them more consistent, and minimize the lengthy disclosure statements.
Of course because Sun is in the lead and because I made some suggestions, I'm sure this entry will be fully scrutinized by every
competitor. If I made errors let me know in the comments and I will correct them.
Disclosure Statement
SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp, and SPEComp registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of August 6, 2007. Actually this one is short because I didn't put any
specific results in this posting, the ones at the links have the more extensive disclosures because they show scores & results.
Tuesday Aug 07, 2007
Beyond UltraSPARC T2 what other technologies matter? There are two more keys to Sun providing such effective performance in the
new single-chip Sun UltraSPARC T2 64-thread processor, that is Solaris (and
now of course OpenSolaris) and Sun Studio compilers. Here is a nice slide of the history of hardware history of SPARC, I borrowed this on from
an entry in "On the Record"
An important thing to remember
that besides Sun's long history with SPARC, we've also lead the way in parallelism. Over 15 years ago, Solaris supported 64-way SPARC systems and
provided near-linear scaling. For those of you old enough to remember, at
that time IBM, SGI, HP, and everyone else thought there was no way Sun
could produce effective 64-way systems. They were wrong and now our competitors have finally
all have introduced systems with lots of processors and/or threads.
Solaris and Sun Studio compilers have a LONG history and lots of experience with industrial-strength applications with lots of threads.
Solaris and Sun Studio compilers were great at scaling to 64-way systems 15 years ago, with a lot more experience and hard work we are even better at scaling and will scale to lots more threads right now. Many thanks to all of those compiler & OS engineers!
Postings on Sun's UltraSPARC T2 performance:
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/performance_of_the_new_sun
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/ultrasparc_t2_more_floating_point
http://blogs.sun.com/sprack/entry/ultrasparc_t2_world_class_crypto
OpenSPARC T2:
http://blogs.sun.com/d/entry/ultrasparc_t2_documentation_available
...I've focused on Solaris, but there are options, for
example Ubuntu. Ubuntu has already booted on the UltraSPARC T2.
As as a reminder Ubuntu and Canonical proved it on an UltraSPARC T1 almost 14 months ago, see this article on that work.
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.
Tuesday Aug 07, 2007
Sun UltraSPARC T2 is an amazing chip and very fast! The UltraSPARC T2 features several industry firsts:
- Eight cores and 64 threads
- Integrated 10 GbE networking and I/O
- Dedicated, cryptographic and floating point units per core
- 10 cryptographic functions supported with hardware
- open-source design: www.opensparc.net
Based upon preliminary runs, the Sun UltraSPARC T2 processor at 1.4 GHz,
beat all single chip scores showing 78.3 est. SPECint_rate2006.
How do these preliminary runs (we must use the term "estimated" by
SPEC rules) compare to SPECint_rate2006 results.
- These Sun UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz processor scores beat the best single-chip
IBM POWER6 4.7GHz processor published result by 29%.
- These Sun UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz processor scores beat the best single-chip
estimated scores of the AMD Barcelona by 23%.
- These Sun UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz processor scores beat the best single-chip
published scores of the 2.66GHz Intel X5355 (Clovertown) by 48%.
Based upon preliminary runs, the Sun UltraSPARC T2 processor at 1.4 GHz,
beat all single chip scores showing 62.3 est. SPECfp_rate2006.
How do these preliminary runs (we must use the term "estimated" by
SPEC rules) compare to SPECfp_rate2006 results.
- These Sun UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz processor scores beat the best
published single-chip IBM POWER6 4.7GHz processor result by 7%.
- These Sun UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz processor scores beat the best single-chip estimated scores of the AMD Barcelona by 11%.
- These Sun UltraSPARC T2 1.4GHz processor scores beat the best single-chip
published scores of the 2.66GHz Intel X5355 (Clovertown) by 66%.
Performance per core doesn't matter GHz doesn't matter, what matters
is numbers of cores, efficiency, and design of the chip! Competitors
are saying that UltraSPARC T2 is proprietary... this makes no sense.
both UltraSPARC T1 and UltraSPARC T2 are open source designs (www.opensparc.net). You do not find the
latest design of Intel, AMD, or IBM as open source designs.
Disclosure Statement:
All Sun UltraSPARC T2 SPEC CPU metrics quoted are from full “reportable”
runs, but are nevertheless designated as “estimates” because they use
preproduction systems. SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp registered trademarks of
Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Sun UltraSPARC T2
1.4GHz (1 chip, 8 cores, 64 threads) 78.3 est. SPECint_rate2006,
62.3 est. SPECfp_rate2006.
Competitive results from www.spec.org as of August 6, 2007.
IBM POWER6 4.7GHz (1 chip, 2 cores, 4 threads) 60.9. SPECint_rate2006,
58.0 SPECfp_rate2006.
AMD Barcelona 2.6 GHz (1 chip, 4 cores, 4 threads) 63.9 est SPECint_rate2006,
56.3 est. SPECfp_rate2006. Barcelona estimates based upon "The Register"
article stating 2.6GHz quad is 21% and 50% faster than Intel 2.66 system.
Fujitsu RX300 Intel X5355 2.66 GHz (1 chip, 4 cores, 4 threads) 52.8 SPECint_rate2006, 47.5 SPECfp_rate2006.
Reminder: The Niagara 2 score was obtained from a full "reportable" SPEC
run, but is designated as an "estimate" because a pre-production system
was used.
...more information on the UltraSPARC T2 later today.
Monday Aug 06, 2007
Many news sources now covering UltraSPARC T2, the new high-performance chip from Sun.
This new UltraSPARC T2 chip leads in many ways. I'll cover the performance numbers tomorrow.
For now:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;898889798
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0625780420070806
http://www.channelweb.co.uk/vnunet/news/2195718/sun-lifts-lid-niagara-processor
etc..
For some of my previous comments:
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/news_trickles_out_on_niagara2
Please remember that the previous generation chip, the UltraSPARC T1,
just set an application-tier world record (all details at link). How many times has the "old" chip with half as many threads set a world record weeks before the new one is announced?
A final note. I venture that this chip is going to lead for database, application tier, and of course web tier, oh and don't forget HPC, yes it is that versatile.
Tuesday Apr 17, 2007
The Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 outperforms the best published single
system from IBM p5 595 (1.9GHz POWER5) by over 2X on the Linpack
benchmark (Highly Parallel Computing). The Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 also tops the high-end single-system Itanium 2 based system from HP (Superdome, 1.6GHz/24MB) by 38% on the Linpack.
Of the 3 vendors Sun, IBM and HP, only Sun can deliver over a TFLOP/s
of performance in a single system on the Linpack HPC benchmark.
(IBM, POWER5-based systems).
This benchmark also used the Sun Performance Library which as many routines
important to scientific users. This library has been enhanced to take advantage of the
SPARC64 VI architecture.
LINPACK HPC Performance - GFLOPS (bigger is better)
| System |
GFLOPS |
Processors |
| Total |
Peak |
Threads |
CPUs |
Type |
GHz |
| Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 |
1032.0 |
1228.8 |
128 |
64 |
SPARC64 VI |
2.4 |
| HP Superdome |
745.5 |
819.2 |
128 |
64 |
Itanium 2 |
1.6 |
| IBM p5 595 |
418.0 |
486.4 |
64 |
32 |
POWER5+ |
1.9 |
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 04/13/07. Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 (SPARC64 VI @2.4, 64 chips,
128 cores), 1.032 TFLOPS. IBM p5 595 (POWER5 1.9GHz, 32 chips, 64 cores)
418.0 GFLOPS. HP Superdome (Itanium 2 1.6GHz/24MB, 64 chips, 128 cores)
745.5 GFLOPS.
System Configuration
Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000
64 x 2.4 GHz SPARC64 VI processors
1 TB memory
Solaris 10
Sun Studio 12
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.
16-way Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 beats the 16-way IBM p5-570 by 32%.
16-way Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 beats the 16-way HP Integrity Superdome by 30%.
16-way 2.4 GHz Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 demonstrated a 17% performance improvement over the 24-way 1.95 GHz Sun Fire E6900.
Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 @2.4 GHz demonstrated a per processor performance improvement of 78% relative to the Sun Fire E6900 @1.95 GHz
Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000 @2.4 GHz demonstrated a per processor performance advantage of over 24% relative to the IBM p5 595.
IBM p5 595 with 4 times as many processors supported only 3.2x more users than the Sun SPARC Enterprise M8000. Therefore...
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 benchmar
|
|
|
|
Nice results!
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