Posts by tintin

HP dons blades to scale Superdome 2

hmm .. yeah

"I think you'll find those high-end Power parts were rare and could only be used in the P595"

5ghz P6 made it into the p550, p570 and p595. Please do your research before sprouting more BS.

"And still the persistance with the idea that clock speed is the only thing that matters."

When did I say that? I said that it went from 1.6Ghz to 1.66Ghz and 13.8% performance improvement per core on the only benchmark HP has published so far. I was comparing it to the 41% improvement you were so unimpressed about when going from POWER5+ to POWER6. if you are unimpressed about 41% from IBM then you must be absolutely devastated by HP's improvement.

Matt is a joke

"I didn't say the SD2 or rx2800 spec sheets were up there"

What you said was: "TPM needs to check the hp website, he would have found the spec sheets, prices, installation manuals, user manuals, in fact everything he said wasn't there"

That sentence lead me to believe that everything is up on the HP website, which it certainly isn't. Nice backpedaling there though.

"Post a link or shutup"

Well you haven't posted any links at all and your previous statement of "montvale sold well against power6" , You don't have any numbers at all.

Here are some links for Q3 2009:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/188951/ibm_hp_servers_wont_stop_x86_onslaught_on_unix.html

IBM: 39.5%

HP: 29.2%

http://blog.itchannelplanet.com/2010/02/ibm-credits-customer-migration.html

Q4 2009:

IBM: +4%

HP:?

"I can tell you because we have run a real Java-based app on both, and the SD buried the P595."

WTF, I am supposed to take your word on this? The industry relies on standard benchmark comparisons which each vendor will run to show off its systems in the best light. In these comparisons the Superdome is buried by the P595. If what you say is true (that HP is faster in performance), why doesn't HP release benchmarks to prove this?

In another thread I posted benchmark on industry standard benchmarks comparing the Power6 p595 and the available results for HP's Superdome. Here they are again in case you missed it:

specInt_rate2006

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 2080

128 core HP 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 1650

POWER6 is 2.52x faster / core

specfp_rate2006

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 2,110

128 core HP 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 1,480

POWER6 is 2.85x faster / core

specJbb2005

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 3,435,485

128 core HP 1.6hz Itanium Superdome - 2,054,864

POWER6 is 3.35x faster / core

SAP-SD 2 tier

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 35,400 users

64 core 1.6Ghz HP Itanium Superdome - 9,265 users

POWER6 is 3.82x faster / core

TPC-C

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 6,085,166

128 core 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 4,092,799

POWER6 is 2.97x faster / core

TPC-H@3000GB

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 156,537

64 core 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 60,359

POWER6 is 2.6x faster / core

Care to explain why your precious Superdome is mauled by the supposedly inferior performing IBM Power6 595? As I said, post proof which I have done instead and just always saying:

"HP is faster, I've benchmarked them myself and trust me, it is faster" type of proof.

More rubbish from Matt

"But if you want to compare to Power5 it's even worse - best P5 was 2.2GHz, P6 is 4.7GHz"

You can't even get this right. Best P5+ was 2.3Ghz and best P6 was 5Ghz.

"gain per core is still only 41%"

What is the gain per core for Tukwila? The only released benchmark so far from HP says it is 13.8% (TPC-H@1000GB). That is comparing the latest late 2010 release Superdome 2 (it is not available yet) against a late 2007 Montvale Superdome. Talk about massive speed improvement in 3 years. Clock speed went from 1.6Ghz to a massive 1.66Ghz. I am awed by the great advances by Intel and HP.

And I am not even going to comment much on the fact that Itanium reached 1.5Ghz in 2003 and 7 years later it is now pushing along at 1.66Ghz.

rx2800, Superdome 2 spec sheets?

I still don't see any Superdome 2 or RX2800 spec sheets. I have already said there was some information about the blades.

Also, the latest information I can find still shows IBM outselling HP Unix server in revenue by 50%. The 2009 Q3 share is 39.5% IBM and 26.2% HP. Where are you getting your information from?

Also, IBM does not need to release the p795 at this moment. The old POWER6 p595 already outperforms the Superdome 2. ie. the P595 gets a higher TPC-H score than the Superdome 2 in the more demanding TPC-H@3000GB (156K) compared to the Superdome 2 result@1000GB (140K). It likely the reason HP doesn't want to do a TPC-H@3000GB benchmark.

Where are the spec sheets?

Hi Matt,

You still haven't shown me any spec sheets. Your entire first post is a lie. Where is the plenty of info? There seems to be no info on the new machines at all except for some marketing fluff and links to get a HP person to call you.

Also, in case you didn't notice IBM did gain UNIX marketshare over HP in the 2007-2009 period. IBM is currently has by far the largest marketshare thanks to the Power6. No amount of lies you can sporut will change that.

"By the way, since you're so upset about spec sheets, where is the IBM datasheet for the P795, the supposed competitor to Superdome2"

Unlike HP, IBM have not announced the P795. I don't expect them to have datasheets if they haven't announced it. HP has announced new machines but with no real technical information about them at all as well as hardly any benchmarks.

Were are the datasheet?

"Nope. If I try www.hp.com/go/superdome2 I get a static page with just the "contact a sales advisor link"

So basically your previous comment where you said there were spec sheet and datasheets on the HP site is completely incorrect. You should apologize to TPM.

"Seeing as the last generation of hp Integrity with Montvale Itaniums sold well against P6/P6+ pSeries"

HP lost marketshare against IBM during the 2007-2009 period.

Where are the datasheets?

Hi Matt,

Could you point to any information on the Superdome 2? I can't seem to find the spec or datasheet for it at all. All I can see is a link to "Have a sales expert contact me". Same for the rx2800 i2. There's not much information about the new Blade systems either.

Also, I don't see any benchmarks released except for a TPC-H@1000GB benchmark which HP compared to a 2 year old Enterprise M9000 and where there are hardly any competitive results. HP seems to have avoided the one at 3000GB since there is a POWER6 result there. Where are all the other common benchmarks like SAP-SD, Specint_rate, specfp_rate, specjbb, TPC-C etc.

Feeds and speeds on HP's Tukwila blades

benchmark comparisons

Hi Matt,

Yep, for the SpecjappServer benchmark at least, it looks like the JS22 is rather weak. However, if you want start a benchmark comparison of POWER6 vs HP Itanium servers.. Let's look at some industry standard benchmarks:

specInt_rate2006

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 2080

128 core HP 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 1650

POWER6 is 2.52x faster / core

specfp_rate2006

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 2,110

128 core HP 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 1,480

POWER6 is 2.85x faster / core

specJbb2005

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 3,435,485

128 core HP 1.6hz Itanium Superdome - 2,054,864

POWER6 is 3.35x faster / core

SAP-SD 2 tier

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 35,400 users

64 core 1.6Ghz HP Itanium Superdome - 9,265 users

POWER6 is 3.82x faster / core

TPC-C

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 6,085,166

128 core 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 4,092,799

POWER6 is 2.97x faster / core

TPC-H@3000GB

64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 156,537

64 core 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 60,359

POWER6 is 2.6x faster / core

IBM sharpens Power7 blades

Kebabbert

"And how about your statements that "despite you need four POWER6 to match two Intel (ordinary) Nehalem, the POWER6 is faster"

The Power6 is generally faster than Nehalem - per core, which is what most software vendors base their charging on. If you are talking per chip, then a 4 core Nehalem is faster than a 2 core Power6 chip.

And don't get sucked into generation this and generation that. If the chips are available in the general timeframe, then they should be compared against each other. I have no idea when T3 will be shipping - if it is within this year, then it will be compared against the POWER7 later in the year, if not, then it might have to go against the POWER7+ next year.

Matt Bryant

"Seeing as dual-core Itaniums have been beating quad-core Power in real World applications"

What quad-core Power? Power6 and power5 were dual core. I'd like to see where the dual core itanium beats a dual core power6 box. Do you have any evidence at all or any benchmarks you can point us to? All I can see is your babbling and hand waving. I think everyone here thinks that you are a joke.

"especially as the cores on the P7 are a step backwards to the P5 design."

Where do you get this nonsense from?

"IBM had to go for specialised and very expensive memory rather than the standard DDR3 Tukzilla will be using"

If it very specialised and high cost, then how come an equivalent Power7 blade with the same amount of RAM, double the amount of cores and 4x the performance is going to cost a lot less than your beloved upcoming Tukzilla baldes? Your posts are a joke.

Microsoft pulls plug on Intel's Itanic

Matt Bryant

"when Power6 came out, IBM was making mucho, mucho noise about its amazing performance on a select few and carefully crafted IBM bench sessions"

What are you talking about? Power6 systems have a complete set of benchmarks on just about all industry standard benchmarks - in fact, it has released more benchmarks than your beloved HP Itanium machines. You can review all the benchmarks at your leisure. If you do, you will see that the Power6 performs much better than the HP Itanium boxes. It doesn't matter how they did it. i.e. higher frequency - the fact remains that they are much faster.

"Don't be fooled - if IBM say they can make something go twice as fast on P7 then make them prove it before you place an order! Remember that none of IBM's carefully crafted bench sessions are anything like what you will be doing in reality."

Well proving performance is applicable to any vendor. All vendors will optimize until they get the best benchmark score they can to publish it. IBM has already released a wide set of industry standard benchmarks for their recnelty released Power7 boxes. Where are the benchmark of your beloved HP Tukwila boxes? The only one release so far (specint_rate/fp_rate) shows that POWER7 is >4x faster for both int and fp per socket than Tukwila. Now that is embarrassing for HP. I'm sure all future benchmark release will also be embarrassing as Tukwila is a dog of a chip in comparison.

Power7 v Power6 - it's all about the cache

POWER7 vs Competition

"Soon we will see Intel Nehalem-EX (which is said to be faster than POWER7)"

There's not a chance that the Nehalem-EX will be faster than the POWER7.

- Neither will Tukwila (Intel is only claiming 2X montvale)

- Bulldozer will be less than 2x of the 6 core Magny cors (frquency decrease)

- Nehalem estimate is below. It is less than 2x Nehalem EP due to the loss in cpu frequency when going to 8 core. Top bin is only 2.26Ghz)

- Venus is still a long way away and if just look at the pitiful Sparc64-VII result. It will have to be magical increase in performance to even go to 1/2 the performance of POWER7.

- Niagara T3 - You've got to be kidding, right?

Some comparisons here:

64 core / 8 chip 3.86Ghz POWER7 - 2530/2240

64 core / 32 chip 5Ghz POWER6 - 2155/2184

32 core / 8 chip 4.14Ghz POWER7 - 1460/1300

64 core / 32 chip 1.6Ghz Itanium - 797/727 (HP)

48 core / 8 chip 2.6Ghz Opteron - 730/470

64 core / 16 chip 2.88Ghz SPACR64-VII - 706/666

24 core / 4 chip Opteron 2.6Ghz - 400/276

8 core / 1 chip 3.86Ghz POWER7 - 326/293 (scaled from 16 core result)

8 core / 1 chip 2.26Ghz Nehalem-EX - 200/150 (est)

8 core / 2 chip Opteron 2.9Ghz - 155/112

4 core / 1 chip 4.14Ghz POWER7 - 183/163 (scaled from 32 core result)

4 core / 1 chip 3.33Ghz Nehalem - 140/108

8 core / 1 chip 1.6Ghz T2+ - 97/69

Power7 - Big Blue eye on UNIX

POWER7 vs Nehalem-EX

"If the Nehalem-EX and POWER7 are roughly comparable performance wise"

They are not comparable. The POWER7 is much faster.

POWER7 vs Nehalem-EX

Yep, POWER7 will be much faster than the Nehalem-Ex. Even the lowest bin POWER7 (3ghz) will be faster than the top bin Nehalem-EX (2.26Ghz).

Benchmarks results for specint_rate_2006 and spec_fp_rate_2006:

Comparisons here:

64 core / 8 chip 3.86Ghz POWER7 - 2530/2240

64 core / 32 chip 5Ghz POWER6 - 2155/2184

32 core / 8 chip 4.14Ghz POWER7 - 1460/1300

64 core / 32 chip 1.6Ghz Itanium - 797/727 (HP)

48 core / 8 chip 2.6Ghz Opteron - 730/470

64 core / 16 chip 2.88Ghz SPACR64-VII - 706/666

24 core / 4 chip Opteron 2.6Ghz - 400/276

8 core / 1 chip 3.86Ghz POWER7 - 326/293 (scaled from 16 core result))

8 core / 1 chip 2.26Ghz Nehalem-EX - 200/150 (est)

8 core / 2 chip Opteron 2.9Ghz - 155/112

4 core / 1 chip 4.14Ghz POWER7 - 183/163 (scaled from 32 core result)

4 core / 1 chip 2.93Ghz Nehalem - 130/100

Big chip for big boxes: IBM cracks open lid on Power7

Wow .. that is impressive

Wow .. this is going to be a killer chip. Should beat Nehalem by quite a large margin.