RE Kebabbert
>Here we see some old benches where T2 outperformed Power6, on spec_int, ORACLE, SAP, Lotus Notes, etc.
>
>http://johnjmclaughlin.blogspot.com/2007/10/utrasparc-t2-server-benchmark-results.html
Are you serious ? These are BMSeer quotes, do you seen any other people participating here using links HP or IBM marketing fud ?
These are chip versus chip comparisons. Yes they are perhaps interessting to you. But if you are talking Licinsing, setting
up real world applications or even comparing servers versus servers they are utterly meaningless.
Have you ever tried to setup a 4 threaded system versus a 64 threaded system to do the same workload ? It's a completely different
ballgame.
You just put yourself in the same category of people that you are pointing fingers at by using SUN's own FUD central.
>SUN has publicly stated that TPC-C is meaningless. It is favours pathological servers that no one use in real life. A while ago, IBM held the record.
>The server used many many Intel CPUs (not Power cpus) and 2TB RAM! And it used many short stroked hard drives! Who uses short stroked hard drives?
>How much does 2TB RAM cost? This config is really silly. And this IBM machine costed like 120 million USD, built for one purpose: TPC-C but nothing else.
>People shun away from TPC-C, they say "if you are good at TPC-C, then it proves that you are good at TPC-C and nothing else.
>Literally nothing else, certainly not average DB usage".
Who cares what SUN says. TPM-C have done more for Database performance, cause the hardware vendors actually learn something from this benchmarks, that goes
into their products, than SUN has done since they choose to stop making those benchmarks.
> If you really think that a average DB admin has access to this machine, then you are wrong. TPC-C is really artificial.
Sure TPC-C is artificial, it's a benchmark. But jup I have access to several, You name it POWER5 p595's with 2TB of RAM, SUPERDOMEs with 64xPA8900
or 128 way x I2 Montecitos, power 570 with 16 4.7GHz cores. And yes they are getting used some with quite large partitions. 56+ cores.
> SUN could also build a server with many intel CPUs and compete in this artificial test, but why would they? It says nothing about real life applications.
So why don't they ?
> Your point does not prove that Power6 is better than Niagara, which is not.
> This reminds of Top500 supercomputers, which are basically a bunch of nodes in a large network.
>On rank nr 5 we find the IBM Blue Gene super computer. It has.... dual core 700MHz PowerPC CPUs! Does a high ranking at Top500 mean that
> IBM makes better CPUs than SUN? Not quite.
You don't really get it do you ? You hail systems with lots of slow cores and lots of threads and then you scoff at Blue Gene, which kind of like uses
the same principle. I mean... you make less and less sence.
>"Even Oracle confirms that, since the processor factor licensing table shows Niagara is the slowest, then comes Intel and IBM are the fastest."
> Come again? Do you mean that Niagara is slower than IBM?
Sure it is. Don't confuse speed with throughput. A niagara Chip will deliver more throughput than a POWER6 chip. But on a core to core basis there
really isn't a match. On a throughput basis it's different there the 8 core 64 threaded niagara chip will outperform a POWER6 chip, if...
1) Your workload can be threaded to enough threads to exploid the 64 threads of the niagara. Not much good if you only have 4 threads.
2) All your bloody threads doesn't block eachother.
3) Your job isn't depending on serialization like the job I'm doing tuning on at the moment. 10 min with 1 thread, then 20 min with Many threads,
then 10 min with one thread and result. The job is heavily CPU bound.
Now who would run this job fastest ? This currently runs on a 3 Core POWER6 4.7Ghz Virtual machine.
Now on a niagara I would most likely get 80 min with 1 thread 14 min with many threads 80 min with 1 thread, oh yes sure I could start up a whole
development project to paralize the code, and pay more for my Oracle License. Welcome to the REAL world.
>It depends on the work load. If I have to transport 1000 persons from one place to another, then what would YOU choose?
>Niagara is like a huge slow bus, whereas legacy constructed CPU as Intel/Power6 are like a porsche.
>Imagine you have to transport 1000 persons. Which would be first to finish? Niagara or Power6?
Wrong again, Niagara is the 64 small slow minibusses, where you need 64 drivers, power6 are 4 fast Large busses using only 4 drivers. So sure
>Niagara shines on multi threaded work under huge loads. It never chokes, which Power6 does.
What are you talking about ? Try slamming your 64 minibusses and 4 Large busses onto a public road, and see who messes up. The sheer
complexity of having 64 threads versus 4 is exactly why the niagara chokes.
>"IBM has 100% right to count cores instead of sockets"
>
>Yes of course. But if you talk about the highest performing CPU, the FASTEST CPU, the you should compare cpu vs cpu, not compare core vs core. Right?
You seem to forget that before Intel and SUN started calling multi core, chips for CPU's, a CPU was equal to what we today call a core for.. well 60 years
or so. And it worked it confused people like you. So why don't we start to call a pig for chicken. It will do wonders for the PIG meat sales.
> Maybe all SUN lovers should write that to? Post as "Anonymous Coward" and write "We love IBM and Power6, but when we tried the new Niagara it smoked!
>And it is one fifth of the price. So we are now swapping our Power6 to Niagara. Sadly.
>I really liked Power6, but clearly Niagara is better and way cheaper. We just can not afford 413.000USD P570 vs a 76.000USD Niagara.
>And the Niagara smokes P570 too".
Well I've seen people throw away their new Niagara boxes, and replace them with partitions on old POWER5 partitions on p595's. Why ? It made sence from
a licing perspective, and running RAC on the Niagara boxes performed so badly that they actually tried to move it to the older v880 test machines to get
some throughput.
And if people are stupid enough to only focus on the cost of the hw box, then let them I don't care. When they mess up their IT infrastructure, then come
to us and we'll throw the lot onto a large POWER server and we'll give you more performance, better uptime at a lower cost.
// Jesper