Woodcrest lagging on GHz gain?

Thursday Nov 02, 2006

Woodcrest having issues scaling with GHz? On the SPECfp_rate2000 result website, when Woodcrest goes from 2 GHz to 3 Ghz (50% clock increase), but the SPECfpRate only adds 17.8%. Not good, is it?

System	Chip/GHz	Config	Score
Fujitsu Siemens CELSIUS R540	5160 3.0 GHz	4-core 2-Socket	80.6
Fujitsu Siemens CELSIUS R540	5150 2.66 GHz	4-core 2-Socket	77.4
Fujitsu Siemens CELSIUS R540	5130 2.0 GHz	4-core 2-Socket	68.4

I'm thinking memory latency is an issue? Tomorrow, I'll look at scaling as you add cores, maybe an issue there?

Disclosure

Fujitsu Siemens CELSIUS R540 2.0GHz (2chips,4cores), 68.4 SPECfp_rate2000, Fujitsu Siemens CELSIUS R540 2.66GHz (2chips,4cores), 77.4 SPECfp_rate2000, Fujitsu Siemens CELSIUS R540 3.0GHz (2chips,4cores), 80.6 SPECfp_rate2000. SPEC, SPECint reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 11/2/06.

Truth on Woodcrest wattage

Thursday Nov 02, 2006

Getting the truth out on Woodcrest. BM Seer getting top ranking in google on woodcrest and watts. A search for "woodcrest wattage" and "Woodcrest watts" gets top two entries. Even a google search for "woodcrest" gets the BM Seer blog entry in at #27.

Seems lots of people are surprised that a 32GB 2 Woodcrest server draws a hefty 510 watts - which is an awful lot in 2RU. Why didn't the Woodcrest vendors just publish this at product launch? Global information age means the info will get out. Transparency is what Jonathan, CEO of Sun Microsystems, always talks about.

...added note Xray's comment is such FUD, 430 watts was measured with almost no disk on a real workload on only a 16GB woodcrest -- simply put, woodcrest wastes 100watts more than a 32GB T2000, and 2x more watts than a T1000. Woodcrest supporters offer no measured wattage on 16GB or 32GB systems, but try to undermine the facts...
If you have a woodcrest measure the watts and post them, clearly woodcrest vendors don't want you to know.

Woodcrest 16GB 430 watt measured:

Dell 2950
2 x 3GHz Woodcrest Xeon 5160 (4MB L2 cache)
16GB = 8 x 2GB DIMM;
one 73GB 15K rpm SAS (disk idle)
1.333MHz FSB
PERC 5/i, x6 Backplane Integrated Controller Card
QLogic 2462 Dual Channel 4GB Optical FC HBA PCI-E
OS: SuSE - SLES
all bios settings correct