IBM (NYSE: IBM) has once again raised the performance bar for its System p(TM) servers, announcing two new benchmark results that extend its leadership position for both the AIX(R) and Linux(R) operating systems and further dwarf the competition. The results include:
-POWER6 rocks: IBM's achievement of the highest overall 4-core TPC-C (measuring transaction processing capability) benchmark result on the POWER6™ processor-based System p 570 running an Oracle Database 10G Enterprise Edition on the AIX OS, IBM's UNIX® operating system, trouncing the prior performance result from HP Itanium2-based servers by more than 75 percent (1).
-POWER 5+ rolls on: IBM's extension of its leadership position in Linux transaction performance on a POWER5+™ processor-based System p5 570 server with the highest 4-core Linux TPC-C benchmark recorded, again, using an Oracle Database, beating HP's best 4-core TPC-C Linux performance by 46 percent while offering 34 percent lower $/tpmC (price/performance). IBM bested HP's Itanium2-based Integrity rx4640 Linux performance with a System p5 570 server running Oracle 10gR2 (2).
With these latest results, IBM has now demonstrated the performance capabilities of the System p 570 through 23 leadership results running AIX. In addition, IBM has now announced 11 new leading performance results on its System p 570 server running with the Linux operating system. (3)
Clients continue to consolidate their server footprints as they look to maximize their IT investments and reduce total electric, space and cooling requirements. With these latest performance numbers, IBM has once again shown that System p servers and IBM's leadership virtualization capabilities provide the computing horsepower customers need today.
"These results combined with our UNIX share gains against both Solaris and especially HP/UX and Itanium2 (4) speak volumes about IBM's leading technology and the overall balanced design of our System p servers," said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy, IBM Power Systems. "More importantly, our customers are able to take advantage of these offerings to improve performance while at the same time saving on energy and reducing costs by using our Advanced POWER Virtualization. It's no surprise that more than 700 customers have moved from HP, Sun and other UNIX platforms to IBM since 2006."
About TPC-C
The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), a not-for-profit organization, was founded to define transaction processing and database performance benchmarks, such as the TPC-C, TPC-H, and TPC-W benchmarks, and to disseminate objective performance data based on these benchmarks. TPC benchmarks have extremely stringent requirements, including both reliability and durability tests, and must undergo an independent audit. Council members include most major database vendors and suppliers of server hardware systems.
TPC-C simulates a complete computing environment where a population of users executes transactions against a database. The benchmark is centered around the principal activities (transactions) of an order-entry environment. These transactions include entering and delivering orders, recording payments, checking the status of orders, and monitoring the level of stock at the warehouses. While the benchmark portrays the activity of a wholesale supplier, TPC-C is not limited to the activity of any particular business segment, but, rather represents any industry that must manage, sell, or distribute a product or service.
The TPC-C benchmark continues to be a popular yardstick for comparing OLTP performance on various hardware and software configurations. TPC-C is the industry-standard benchmark for measuring the performance and scalability of OLTP systems. It tests a broad cross-section of database functionality including inquiry, update, and queued mini-batch transactions. Many IT professionals consider TPC-C to be a valid indicator of "real-world" OLTP system performance.
TPC also measures the price/performance of a system by dividing the total system cost by the performance, measured in transactions per minute (tpmC). The TPC-C benchmark measures throughput in business tpmC for a simulated order-entry and distribution environment. Specifically, it measures how many new order tpmC a system generates while the system is simultaneously executing four other transaction types, such as payments, order-status updates, deliveries, and stock-level changes.
About IBM System p servers
Renowned for their computing power, IBM System p servers support user needs across a broad range of applications, including transaction processing, web publishing, data mining, systems management and others. This family of 1- to 64-core IBM Power processor-based systems is designed to provide customers with leadership features for high performance, availability, scalability and dynamic resource allocation. Unique IBM virtualization features allow users to process more information on a single server than ever before, creating the potential to save on total cost of system ownership, as well as space and energy costs.
System p products are designed for smaller and mid-sized business and large enterprises that are using UNIX platforms. The servers use AIX, IBM's UNIX operating system, and also support thousands of Linux applications. Migration services enable customers to quickly and easily convert from competing platforms -- such as Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard -- to IBM hardware.
System p servers are powered by IBM's leadership technology, including the POWER6 microprocessor, the world's fastest chip, built using IBM's state-of-the-art 65 nanometer process technology. At 4.7GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it, meaning customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half.
For more information on IBM System p servers and offerings, please visit http://www.ibm.com/systems/p/
For more information, please visit www.ibm.com.
Footnotes
IBM is a trademark of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other company/product names and service marks may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. TPC-C is a trademark of the Transaction Processing Performance Council. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries licensed exclusively through The Open Group. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.
(1) -- IBM TPC-C result on the IBM System p 570 of 404,462.54 tpmC ($3.50/tpmC, configuration available 11/26/2007). The 4-core, 2 processor chips, 8 threads 4.7 GHz POWER6 p570 with 192 GB of memory was running Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition on AIX 5L V5.3. The 25.603 TB storage subsystem consisted of 5 DS4800 storage servers, 52 DS4000 EXP810 expansion units and 780 (36GB, 4Gbps) 15k rpm Fibre Channel disk drives. HP Integrity rx6600 dual-core Itanium2 (2 1.6 GHz processors, 4 cores,8 threads) result of 230,569 tpmC ($2.63/tpmC, avail. 12/1/2006) running Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition on HP-UX 11i v2 64 bit. Source: http://www.tpc.org. All results current as of 10/5/07.
(2) -- IBM TPC-C result on the IBM System p5 570 of 236,271 tpmC ($2.56/tpmC, configuration available 4/04/2008). The 4-core, 4 processor chips, 8 threads 2.2 GHz POWER5 p5-570 with 128 GB of memory was running Oracle Database 10gR2 Enterprise Edition on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 5. The 22.301 TB storage subsystem consisted of 8 DS3400 storage servers and 304 (73.4GB, 3 Gbps) 15k rpm SAS disk drives. HP Integrity rx4640 dual-core Itanium2 (4, 1.6 GHz processors, 4 cores, 4 threads) result of 161,217 tpmC ($3.94/tpmC, avail. 12/07/2004) running Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition on Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3. Source: http://www.tpc.org. All results current as of 10/9/07.
(3) -- http://www.ibm.com/....
(4) -- According to IDC's Worldwide Server Tracker, IBM grew UNIX revenue 9.7 percent year-to-year and added 3.1 points of share in the first half of 2007.
-POWER6 rocks: IBM's achievement of the highest overall 4-core TPC-C (measuring transaction processing capability) benchmark result on the POWER6™ processor-based System p 570 running an Oracle Database 10G Enterprise Edition on the AIX OS, IBM's UNIX® operating system, trouncing the prior performance result from HP Itanium2-based servers by more than 75 percent (1).
-POWER 5+ rolls on: IBM's extension of its leadership position in Linux transaction performance on a POWER5+™ processor-based System p5 570 server with the highest 4-core Linux TPC-C benchmark recorded, again, using an Oracle Database, beating HP's best 4-core TPC-C Linux performance by 46 percent while offering 34 percent lower $/tpmC (price/performance). IBM bested HP's Itanium2-based Integrity rx4640 Linux performance with a System p5 570 server running Oracle 10gR2 (2).
With these latest results, IBM has now demonstrated the performance capabilities of the System p 570 through 23 leadership results running AIX. In addition, IBM has now announced 11 new leading performance results on its System p 570 server running with the Linux operating system. (3)
Clients continue to consolidate their server footprints as they look to maximize their IT investments and reduce total electric, space and cooling requirements. With these latest performance numbers, IBM has once again shown that System p servers and IBM's leadership virtualization capabilities provide the computing horsepower customers need today.
"These results combined with our UNIX share gains against both Solaris and especially HP/UX and Itanium2 (4) speak volumes about IBM's leading technology and the overall balanced design of our System p servers," said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy, IBM Power Systems. "More importantly, our customers are able to take advantage of these offerings to improve performance while at the same time saving on energy and reducing costs by using our Advanced POWER Virtualization. It's no surprise that more than 700 customers have moved from HP, Sun and other UNIX platforms to IBM since 2006."
About TPC-C
The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), a not-for-profit organization, was founded to define transaction processing and database performance benchmarks, such as the TPC-C, TPC-H, and TPC-W benchmarks, and to disseminate objective performance data based on these benchmarks. TPC benchmarks have extremely stringent requirements, including both reliability and durability tests, and must undergo an independent audit. Council members include most major database vendors and suppliers of server hardware systems.
TPC-C simulates a complete computing environment where a population of users executes transactions against a database. The benchmark is centered around the principal activities (transactions) of an order-entry environment. These transactions include entering and delivering orders, recording payments, checking the status of orders, and monitoring the level of stock at the warehouses. While the benchmark portrays the activity of a wholesale supplier, TPC-C is not limited to the activity of any particular business segment, but, rather represents any industry that must manage, sell, or distribute a product or service.
The TPC-C benchmark continues to be a popular yardstick for comparing OLTP performance on various hardware and software configurations. TPC-C is the industry-standard benchmark for measuring the performance and scalability of OLTP systems. It tests a broad cross-section of database functionality including inquiry, update, and queued mini-batch transactions. Many IT professionals consider TPC-C to be a valid indicator of "real-world" OLTP system performance.
TPC also measures the price/performance of a system by dividing the total system cost by the performance, measured in transactions per minute (tpmC). The TPC-C benchmark measures throughput in business tpmC for a simulated order-entry and distribution environment. Specifically, it measures how many new order tpmC a system generates while the system is simultaneously executing four other transaction types, such as payments, order-status updates, deliveries, and stock-level changes.
About IBM System p servers
Renowned for their computing power, IBM System p servers support user needs across a broad range of applications, including transaction processing, web publishing, data mining, systems management and others. This family of 1- to 64-core IBM Power processor-based systems is designed to provide customers with leadership features for high performance, availability, scalability and dynamic resource allocation. Unique IBM virtualization features allow users to process more information on a single server than ever before, creating the potential to save on total cost of system ownership, as well as space and energy costs.
System p products are designed for smaller and mid-sized business and large enterprises that are using UNIX platforms. The servers use AIX, IBM's UNIX operating system, and also support thousands of Linux applications. Migration services enable customers to quickly and easily convert from competing platforms -- such as Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard -- to IBM hardware.
System p servers are powered by IBM's leadership technology, including the POWER6 microprocessor, the world's fastest chip, built using IBM's state-of-the-art 65 nanometer process technology. At 4.7GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it, meaning customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half.
For more information on IBM System p servers and offerings, please visit http://www.ibm.com/systems/p/
For more information, please visit www.ibm.com.
Footnotes
IBM is a trademark of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other company/product names and service marks may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. TPC-C is a trademark of the Transaction Processing Performance Council. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries licensed exclusively through The Open Group. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.
(1) -- IBM TPC-C result on the IBM System p 570 of 404,462.54 tpmC ($3.50/tpmC, configuration available 11/26/2007). The 4-core, 2 processor chips, 8 threads 4.7 GHz POWER6 p570 with 192 GB of memory was running Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition on AIX 5L V5.3. The 25.603 TB storage subsystem consisted of 5 DS4800 storage servers, 52 DS4000 EXP810 expansion units and 780 (36GB, 4Gbps) 15k rpm Fibre Channel disk drives. HP Integrity rx6600 dual-core Itanium2 (2 1.6 GHz processors, 4 cores,8 threads) result of 230,569 tpmC ($2.63/tpmC, avail. 12/1/2006) running Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition on HP-UX 11i v2 64 bit. Source: http://www.tpc.org. All results current as of 10/5/07.
(2) -- IBM TPC-C result on the IBM System p5 570 of 236,271 tpmC ($2.56/tpmC, configuration available 4/04/2008). The 4-core, 4 processor chips, 8 threads 2.2 GHz POWER5 p5-570 with 128 GB of memory was running Oracle Database 10gR2 Enterprise Edition on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 5. The 22.301 TB storage subsystem consisted of 8 DS3400 storage servers and 304 (73.4GB, 3 Gbps) 15k rpm SAS disk drives. HP Integrity rx4640 dual-core Itanium2 (4, 1.6 GHz processors, 4 cores, 4 threads) result of 161,217 tpmC ($3.94/tpmC, avail. 12/07/2004) running Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition on Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3. Source: http://www.tpc.org. All results current as of 10/9/07.
(3) -- http://www.ibm.com/....
(4) -- According to IDC's Worldwide Server Tracker, IBM grew UNIX revenue 9.7 percent year-to-year and added 3.1 points of share in the first half of 2007.
