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RE[3]: Sun performances...
by Kebabbert on Mon 17th Nov 2008 17:20 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Sun performances..."
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But for some multi threaded work loads the Niagara IS many times faster than an x86. You dont trust the benchmarks? They are fake? Or do you think I claim that the Niagara are in general 20 times faster than an x86 cpu? Where do I claim that? Either way, you are wrong. For some work loads the Niagaras are way faster, and neither do I claim Niagaras are that fast in general. Learn to read. When IBM announce an benchmark, it is not meant to be interpreted as a general statement, right? It is a claim regarding that particular set up for that very benchmark. If you think otherwise, you think wrong. Again. I suggest you study some higher mathematics. That will sharpen your thinking skills. As of now, you are drawing wrong conclusions. SUN has always been very clear that Niagara cpus are for throughput and not single threaded work. If you think that SUN generalizes that statement to mean that Niagaras are 20 times faster in general, then you are drawing a false conclusion. Again. Like when you again and again always state that ZFS requires several GB to just run - when I and other have told you several times that ZFS doesnt. Ive told you many times Ive run ZFS on 32 bit pentium 4 with 1 GB RAM for over a year. Wrong again. We dont reach you, that's obvious.

And, yes Niagara hardware is expensive in relation to x86. But in comparison to IBM and HP-UX, they are at a fraction of the price. And way faster on some tasks. For instance one SUN machine with 4 Niagara cpus @ 1.4GHz is twice as fast as 3 IBM Power6 machines @ 4.7 GHz with 12 Power6 CPUs on Siebel benchmarks. SUN: 4 x 1.4GHz = 5.6GHz is twice as fast as 12 x 4.7GHz = 56.4 GHz. And, a lot cheaper also. Maybe it is just me, but for multi threaded work, I would surely examine how SUN Niagara boxes does for my work load. So what if it isnt fast on all workloads? IBM is not fast on all work loads either e.g. multi threaded work load. You try to say that you shouldnt even consider what Niagara boxes can do for your particular work load, because of some strange reason?

Understand this; Niagara boxes compete with IBM AIX Unix and HP-UX unix, not with x86. Everything you say about the Niagara, also applies to IBM Power6. Or IBM mainframes which are 1 IBM mainframe Mips == 4 GHz x86. IBM Mainframe CPUs are really slow. You can emulate one Mainframe on a laptop with a program called Hercules. In fact, Ive heard of a customer that migrated an entire mainframe to a Solaris box with 4 Niagara cpus, with plenty of power left.

The customer that migrated 251 Linux x86 Dell 2950 servers onto 24 Niagara boxes, did a naive thing? Ah, you mean they didnt test anything first? Maybe it is you who are naive if you think companies change their important infra structure without testing and doing an analysis first?

For instance, STRATA second largest web company in Europe which handles up to 1 billion email a day, migrated their whole back end to one Niagara box with 4 cpus with plenty of capacity left. You are naive if you think they would migrate without testing first.

Frankly, you would get fired if you worked at my company. For incompetence. If you have a solution that are cheaper and 10 times faster and suits your work load perfect, and still you wont even consider it, then you are incompetent. You make the company loose money it could have saved.

I dont understand your frankly, ignorant, comments. "Who needs detection of silent corruption as ZFS offers?" "You shouldnt even consider Niagara because they are not that fast in general". etc. Really weird remarks. Unless, you work for IBM or some similar company. Then your comments make sense.

And yes, the ordinary SPARC are not that fast. That is true, but SUN dont claim that either. The advantage of SPARC is that x86 is a buggy architecture, and SPARC is not. For instance Ive heard that the Fujitsi SPARC64 allows you to back an instruction if it turns out to be bad. Only Mainframes had that functionality earlier.

Edited 2008-11-17 17:24 UTC

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