How UltraSPARC-T2/T2+ Beats Power6+ and Itanium

I came across this great blog entry from Sun on how the new 1.6Ghz UltraSPARC-T2/T2+ processor can outperform the Power6+ and Itanium processors. It's an excellent read and uses results from SPEC to demonstrate how CMT throughput matters more than clock speed or cache size.

I have used the SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks in the past to do comparisons of different servers. While it may not reflect well on "real world" workloads, it's a good base indicator. When one factors in the results from Oracle, SAP, SPECjbb, etc. a more realistic picture can be obtained. Of course the best way to understand how a server will behave with your application is actually run your application on it and simulate the workload. There are many commercial products out there, such as HP's Mercury tools that can automate such tests. In environments that I have worked in previously that have sensitive performance requirements, having such tools are invaluable for sizing and comparisons.

1.6Ghz T2/T2+ Systems Released

Today Sun has announced the availability of 1.6Ghz UltraSPARC-T2 and UltraSPARC-T2+ processors for the T-Series servers. As a result, the higher-end configurations that had the 1.4Ghz 8-core processors will now have the 1.6Ghz processors. The 1.2Ghz 8-core processor configurations will now have 1.4Ghz 8-core processors. And the 1.2Ghz 4-core processor configurations will remain on the low-end. Pricing wise, it looks like the 1.4Ghz 8-core processors are priced the way the 1.2Ghz 8-cores were priced. The 1.6Ghz 8-core processors seem to be priced at the old 1.4Ghz 8-core price point. So it's a nice speed increase for the product line. Here are some more enhancements:

• Solaris 10 5/09 OS Preloaded
• LDoms Manager and MIB 1.2 Pre-install
• ILOM 3.0
• CMT Tools 1.0 Pre-install
• GCC 4 for SPARC Systems 4.0.4 Pre-install
• Sun Studio 12 Pre-install
• SYS, FW, Download UTIL Pre-install
• MAI, 10 GBE ETCSYS CFG
• Live Upgrade, ABE Pre-install
• SATA DVD-RW Drives instead of PATA
• EOL of 1GB FB-DIMMs
• 4GB 800Mhz FB-DIMM Option for T5440 1.6Ghz Configurations
• New Disk Backplanes on certain models
• 32GB Solid State Disk Option
  
• New Perforated Chassis Covers

The great thing is that the T-Series servers are pre-loaded with the latest and greatest software and firmware, making them ready for LDoms. I'll assume that at some point the UltraSPARC-T1 systems will be EOL'd, to make room for the UltraSPARC-KT servers when they come out.



As customers leverage these servers for consolidation and virtualization, the need for good management tools will become extremely important. Luckily, while xVM OpsCenter is taking a long time to support LDoms, there is Wand from Ecoviv that can fill the gap with a centralized web management interface.


It's rather unfortunate that IBM's FUD machine continues to spread lies about CMT, but as they say the proof is in the pudding. With the 1.6Ghz announcement, there is also a new benchmark with the T5440 running the SAP SD benchmark where it beat competing Power6 and Itanium configurations on both price and performance. There are some other interesting customer wins that are mentioned with the benchmark above, located here. The T5440 also beat an HP DL580 G5 in the SPEC jAppServer2004 benchmark by 74%. Altogether, this demonstrates that CMT can compete in web, application, and database tiers.

Realistically, all the major ISV vendors have already moved to the multi-threaded model and developers can leverage SunStudio and JavaStudio to optimize their code. This will continue to become prevalent as even commodity processors for desktop, laptops, and even mobile devices continues to shift toward multi-core and multi-threaded processors. The clock speeds of processors can no longer be pushed without some significant manufacturing changes or everyone switching to liquid-cooling. And even then, the issue of large latencies for memory and I/O would become more obvious. With such constraints and the increasing emphasis on better power performance, CMT is still ahead of the pack.

Interview with SunNews on Blog Talk Radio

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Chhandomay Mandal for SunNews on Blog Talk Radio. The interview was on OpenSolaris and my involvement in the community. A transcript can be found here. Below is the podcast from the interview, hope you enjoy! It was a lot of fun to participate in!

Sun Stockholders Approve Oracle Bid

Today the stockholders voted with ~62% approval for the Oracle acquisition bid. From my reading of the SEC filing documents, it would appear that Oracle will retain the Sun branding and that Sun will be a subsidiary of Oracle. Now we just have to wait for US and EU approval for the acquisition. Unfortunately, it's during these "hurry-up-n-wait" moments that things tend to go into a limbo state. Hopefully, Oracle and Sun management will shift things into gear quickly to avoid such lingering limbo states.

I know there has been some apprehension and negativity from crack-pot journalists and anti-Sun folks out there about this deal. However, I remain rather up-beat about this as Oracle has been very positive about creating a on-stop shop for fully integrated stacks of hardware and software that include Solaris, SPARC/x64 servers, MySQL, JAVA, storage, etc. Once things are on-track, IBM and HP will have a rude awakening that Oracle is after them with a full product line-up, powerful marketing, and a sales force that can push products.

I also realize that not all things are bright and wonderful. Things change at companies and Sun is not the same company I use to work for years ago. But it has not affected my use or enthusiasm for its products or services. I have no doubts that there will be layoffs of redundant corporate components, contractors, engineers, and of course everyday employees. Not to mention that some low-hanging or non-profitable products or R&D work will get canceled. Unfortunately, that's just part of business and house-cleaning. I do think that cuts and RIFs have been made recently to get things in order as it where. To any employees that may face such a grim situation, I wish you well and ask that you don't give up. Once the dust settles, there will be new opportunities at Sun/Oracle. Hopefully Oracle management will be able to take Sun to new heights and back into a leadership position in the market.

LDoms 1.2 Released!

Well it's that time of the year again when a new version of LDoms has been released! Version 1.2 has some great new features and enhancements:

• Physical-to-Virtual Migration Tool
• Configuration Assistant
• Power Management for the CPU
• Jumbo TCP/IP Frames for Virtual Networking
• Restriction of Delayed Reaction for the Control Domain
• Domain Dependency Configurations
• Auto-Recovery of Configurations
• Exporting Virtual Storage Back-ends Multiple Times
• API to Support LDMD Auto-Discovery

The included P2V tool allows one to take a sun4u server running Solaris 8-10 and convert it into a Solaris 10 sun4v image! This is very similar to the Solaris 8/9 Migration Assistant for Containers. The Configuration Assistant gives you an ncurses and Java GUI for doing the initial configuration of your server. Definitely a handy tool for getting people started. The other enhancements will help with power management, networking, configuration management, sharing storage, and enabling management products such as Wand.

I've already updated the main LDoms Community page with all the links to the software, firmware, and documentation. I'll have some more posts over the weekend as I upgrade my environment.

Also for your viewing pleasure, here are some links to demos done on rapid provisioning and mobility with LDoms. Also a sneak peak at xVM OpsCenter managing LDoms is here:)

I'd like to thank all the Sun Engineers and Managers involved with the 1.2 release! Continue doing an excellent job and keep those features coming:)

PS, if you can't find the 1.2 release on the main download site, here is the direct link.