Sun Fire X4275 Sybase IQ TPC-H 1000GB World Record Price Performance, Non-Clustered

Tuesday Apr 14, 2009

This TPC-H result demonstrates that the Sun Fire X4275 server, powered by 2 Quad-core 2.93 GHz Intel Nehalem X5570 processors, using only 12 internal disks (SAS 300GB 15K RPM), achieved a QphH@1000GB of 23,365 with a price performance of $2.41. This is the best price performance among all non-clustered server results at 1000GB.

Best price/performance among all TPC-H results at 1000GB, 70% better than the previous best (Sun Fire X4500) and 75% better than the previous second best ie. the HP DL585.

It is the Best 2-chip or 2-socket server result, even better than many 4-sockets servers.

To put this result in perspective, the best non Sun single server submission at 1000GB was the HP Superdome. The Superdome achieved  a QphH of 69,999 (about 3 times the Sun Fire X4275 performance) BUT:  it required almost 100 times the number of disks, more than 35 times the price and 8 times the number of cores when compared  to the Sun Fire X4275 configuration!

Once again, the Sun/SybaseIQ combination has produced a self-contained (i.e. a server without any external storage or external processing engines) data warehousing solution. Only Sun has the hardware and expertise to produce such TPC-H results. To date, Sun has published self-contained TPC-H results for each of the 100GB, 300GB, 1000GB and 3000GB scale-factors.

This is a extremely compact solution requiring only 2 rack units in total. Again contrast the Sun result with the HP Superdome, using 97 storage arrays at 3 RU each plus a 48 inch cabinet for the server.

Extremely efficient power consumption; peak power consumption throughout the entire benchmark run was 825 Watts with an average consumption of 750 Watts.

{humor: Any comments from HP or Dell or IBM why they never publish watts on any standard benchmarks with real size memory (i.e. anything above 16GB) ? } I'll take comments from incognito HP, IBM, or Dell employees below, as always.

Performance Results

In order to put the Sun Fire X4275 TPC-H result in perspective, the table below shows the top non-clustered TPC-H@1000 results from Sun, Bull and HP in ascending order of  $/QphH as of April 14, 2009.

System CPU	so/ co/ th	DB	QphH	$/QphH	Price $USD	# Disks	Avail- able	Data Ratio
Sun Fire X4275, 72GB Intel X5540, 2.93GHz	2/8/16	Sybase IQ	23,365	2.41	56,263.91	12	4/14/09	3.5
Sun Fire X4500, 64GB AMD Opteron 2.8GHz	2/4/4	Sybase IQ	5,604	8.11	45,439	48	10/15/07	11.2
HP DL585 G2, 32GB AMD Opteron 2.8GHz	4/8/8	SQL Server	14,773	9.73	143,736	206	4/25/07	7.8
Bull Novascale 3045, 64GB Itanium 1.6GHz	4/8/16	SQL Server	12,087	12.56	151,870	160	3/6/07	5.7
HP DL585 G1, 64GB AMD Opteron 2.4GHz	4/4/4	SQL Server	10,493	13.83	145,264	164	3/2/06	6.4
HP Superdome	32/ 64/ 64	SQL Server	69,999	28.69	2,008,168	1198	6/18/07	40.63

Legend:

so/co/th = sockets, cores, threads
QphH  = Overall TPC-H Composite Metric (bigger is better).
$/QphH  = TPC-H Price/Performance metric (smaller is better)
Data Ratio = Total disk to actual data ratio

Complete benchmark results may be found at http://www.tpc.org.

Benchmark Description

The results reported here were performed on a Sun Fire X4275 system and used Sybase IQ as the database manager. Sybase IQ is a special product designed specifically for data warehousing applications. Sybase IQ was developed as a totally separate product from the more widely known Sybase database management system (Sybase Adaptive Server).

The TPC-H benchmark is a performance benchmark established by the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) to demonstrate Data Warehousing/Decision Support Systems (DSS). TPC-H measurements are produced for customers to evaluate the performance of various DSS systems. These queries and updates are executed against a standard database under controlled conditions. Performance projections and comparisons between different TPC-H Database sizes (300GB, 300GB, 1000GB, 3000GB and 10000GB) are not allowed by the TPC.

TPC-H is a data warehousing-oriented, non-industry-specific benchmark that consists of a large number of complex queries typical of decision support applications. It also includes some insert and delete activity that is intended to simulate loading and purging data from a warehouse. TPC-H measures the combined performance of a particular database manager on a specific computer system.

The main performance metric reported by TPC-H is called the TPC-H Composite Query-per-Hour Performance Metric (QphH@SF, where SF is the number of GB of raw data, referred to as the scale factor). QphH@SF is intended to summarize the ability of the system to process queries in both single and multi user modes. The benchmark requires reporting of price/performance, which is the ratio of QphH to total HW/SW cost plus 3 years maintenance. A secondary metric is the storage efficiency, which is the ratio of total configured disk space in GB to the scale factor.

The QphH composite metric is the Geometric Mean of 2 components: (1) a single user component, called Power, and a (2) multi-user component, called Throughput.  Power is a performance measurement of a single user stream of 22 queries, one batch insert and one batch delete, all run serially. The Throughput metric, instead, consists of essentially N concurrent Power streams (or “users” submitting queries), where N is a minimum number of required streams dependent upon the database size. For example, at 300GB, N must be at least 5 and at 300GB N must be at least 6. Both Power and Throughput are calculated metrics and each is inversely proportional to the queries elapsed time: thus the faster the queries finish, the larger the metric becomes and the better the result.

Disclosure Statement:

TPC-H, QphH, $/QphH are registered trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). More info at http://www.tpc.org/. Sun Fire X4275 23,365@1000GB, $2.41/QphH@1000GB, available 4/14/09.

Results Summary

Audited Results
	Database Size:		1000 GB (Scale Factor 1000)
	TPC-H Composite:		23,365.3
	Price/performance:		$2.41
	Available		4/14/09
Number of Systems:			1
Total Number Processors:			2
Total Number of Cores			8
Total Number of Threads			16
Processor/MHz of Server:			Intel Nehalem 2.93 GHz X5570 Quad Core
Storage:			12 x 15K SAS drives (all internal)
Database:			Sybase IQ 15
Operating System:			Solaris 10
Total 3 year Cost:			$56,263.91
Other Performance Metrics
	TPC-H Power:		29,824.6
	TPC-H Throughput:		18,304.9
	Database Load Time:		5 Hr 39 Min
	Storage Ratio:		3.35