Archive | April, 2003

Sun’s Server Delivers Best Price Performance – First to Break the $200/QphH@3000GB Barrier for Any Configuration

Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced another record-breaking benchmark in a series of announcements that further validates its performance and price/performance superiority. Performance tests of Oracle9i Database Release 2 running on the Sun Fire 15K server, Sun StorEdge arrays and the Sun ONE platform have established Sun as the fastest performing and best price/performance single system on the market. This industry standard benchmark represents ad-hoc queries and is representative of the real-world decision support and data warehousing applications. IBM has yet to run a TPC-H benchmark on its mainframe or p690 single-system server.

The Sun Fire 15K system outperformed the next best single server, the HP Superdome, 23 percent on the high-load throughput test. Throughput is a measure of a heavily-loaded system, it also beat HPs price/performance by seven percent.

The benchmark was performed on a 72-way 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC[r] III processor-based Sun Fire 15K system with 288GB of memory, running the industry-leading Solaris 9 Operating System (OS) and Oracle9i Database Release 2, topping the performance of all HP systems. The server also utilized 33 Sun StorEdge A5200 disk arrays. The system delivered 28,948.1 QphH@3000GB at a price performance of $184/QphH@3000GB, with a scheduled availability of April 30, 2003.

The versatile 72-way Sun Fire 15K server with 1.200 GHz CPUs is rated by Sun at 7,250 Mainframe Equivalent MIPS, which surpasses the fastest IBM mainframe, while maintaining a lower price. Following are TPC-H Version 2 performance and price/performance results currently published for the 3000GB scale factor.

About TPC-H

Established by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), the TPC-H benchmark is an industry-standard Decision Support test designed to measure systems’ capability to examine large volumes of data, execute queries with a high degree of complexity, and give answers to critical business questions. The TPC-H benchmark evaluates a composite performance metric (QphH@size) and a price/performance metric $/QphH@size) that measure the performance of various decision support systems by the execution of sets of queries against a standard database under controlled conditions.

TPC-H, QphH and $/QphH are trademarks of the TPC. For additional information on the TPC-H benchmark, please visit the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s Web site at http://www.tpc.org/

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Sun Fire, Sun StorEdge and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.

UltraSPARC® processors rise above commodity products

Microprocessors are often thought of as commodity components distinguished only by price. Yet Sun has proven that its open, noncommodity UltraSPARC processor chips deliver superior functionality that more than compensates for a slightly higher manufacturing cost.

If Sun had clung to a commodity-centric focus during the last 15 years, its customers might never have enjoyed the benefits of certain revolutionary advances in chip design, including reduced instruction set computer (RISC) and symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) technology. For Sun, it’s always been about finding the right balance between innovation and economy.

That approach continues today, and it has never been more valuable. The UltraSPARC processor’s chip multithreading (CMT) technology is ready to boost performance up to 50 times over existing UltraSPARC processor chips. The UltraSPARC processor and CMT enable administrators to harness the power of dozens of servers onto a single blade. The management and maintenance savings are as phenomenal as the technology itself.

Commodity Does Not Equal Open

In the microprocessor realm, the terms “open” and “commodity” are often used carelessly in a manner that erroneously equates them. This sows confusion both in the industry and in the marketplace.

The term “open” refers to the capability of products and technologies to connect and interoperate with each other. Open interfaces, be they hardware or software, are generally publicly documented and based on an explicit or de facto industry standard. For example, the Internet depends on the propagation of the TCP/IP networking protocol.

The term “commodity” implies a common component that offers negligible feature differentiation from similar components. Thus, price becomes the most significant point of comparison. Thanks to economies of scale, a commodity generally promises lower prices. And of course, lower costs are generally good. Yet by definition, a commodity does not promise greater functionality.

The confusion between “open” and “commodity” might be thickest when people talk about Intel processors. Some call Intel’s chips “open” because they are ubiquitous on desktop systems. Yet Intel neither openly shares its design and hardware interfaces nor publishes these specifications. Intel’s chips are not open; they are commodities.

What Open Looks Like

The UltraSPARC processor architecture, on the other hand, is truly open. SPARC International is an independent body that oversees and promotes the technology’s evolution. The SPARC-V9 processor instruction set is in the public domain, as are entire UltraSPARC processor designs, which can be used by any company to create derivative products. This is what “open” really means.

Sun’s investment in UltraSPARC processors and the Solaris Operating Environment runs counter to the arguments of those who tout the benefits of commodity computing. The PC market, where commodity chips such as the Intel Pentium are anointed as standards, shapes their perspective.

Yet the forces that drive commodity microprocessors would not naturally have delivered advanced RISC, SMP, and CMT designs. Regarding the latter, most PC software is not multithreaded and cannot take advantage of a microprocessor capable of running dozens of threads. Also, 32-bit architectures cannot address sufficient memory to support large-scale CMT designs.

What Open Does

Sun has always built its products around open standards and with commodity components when possible. Yet there are several instances in which Sun has gone beyond a commodity-centric approach in order to spur innovation and create superior value for its customers. It is this perspective that drives Sun’s investment in UltraSPARC processors and the Solaris Operating Environment.

In 1986, Sun introduced the first UltraSPARC processor, which employed a revolutionary RISC architecture. Compared to the complex instruction set computer (CISC) design common in microprocessors of that era, the RISC-based UltraSPARC processor was an incredible breakthrough. RISC-based systems were up to seven times more powerful than CISC-based systems, at a lower cost.

The UltraSPARC processor’s next major wave of innovation, beginning in 1992, incorporated SMP, which enabled large shared-memory computers. Sun enhanced the basic UNIX threading model to create the Solaris Operating Environment, the highly threaded UNIX-based operating system so renowned today. Taken together, these advances delivered performance that was 50 to 100 times faster than uniprocessor systems.

The UltraSPARC processor is now entering its third wave of innovation, thanks again to Sun’s approach that considers microprocessors more than commodities. With CMT, our engineers have integrated the power of large-scale SMP onto a single piece of silicon. A single UltraSPARC processor chip can now process dozens of threads simultaneously, a quantum change in computer design.

The Solaris Operating Environment, unlike most desktop operating systems, can leverage CMT to run 32 or 64 simultaneous threads. For threaded applications, future UltraSPARC processors will deliver up to 50 times the performance of today’s fastest UltraSPARC processor, without a significantly higher cost-per-chip.

And just as important as speed, CMT enables administrators to consolidate the infrastructure of dozens of servers onto a single blade. Imagine the savings in administration, maintenance, power, cooling, and floor space.

Finding the Balance

Ultimately, the burning issue in the microprocessor market is not about openness versus commodification. It’s about finding the right balance between true innovation and economies of scale. Sun continues to be committed to open hardware and software interfaces built on emerging, defined, and de facto standards. As we develop technology for UltraSPARC processors and the Solaris Operating Environment, Sun customers can count on openness and, above all, superior value.