Sun Blade X6250 Server Module

The Sun Blade X6250 server module, equipped with two dual-core Intel Xeon X5260 CPUs and running 64-bit SuSE Linux (SLES10) OS, posted record-breaking scores on a Standard suite of the ANSYS 11 benchmark, improving upon previously posted results by 25% on average.

ANSYS 11 software is a comprehensive multidisciplinary tool combining structural, thermal, fluid, acoustic and electromagnetic simulation capabilities in a single engineering software solution that is applicable to a broad range of industries and applications. To provide customers with a basis for comparison across multiple architectures, operating systems and interconnects, ANSYS has developed a benchmark that has two suites: Standard and Distributed. These suites consist of multiple workloads and cover a representative set of structural analysis solvers and analysis types for stand-alone SMP systems, as well as clustered configurations.

The Standard suite of the benchmark was run on a Sun Blade X6250 server module at different core levels: 1, 2, and the maximum of 4. It is worth noting that the 7 test cases from ANSYS Standard test suite do not scale very well past 8 cores and the memory requirements for these test cases are less than 3GB, making Sun's dual-socket server module with dual or quad core processors the perfect building block for custom engineering solutions. Additionally, as the below table suggests, the same system has also produced stellar results when outfitted with other recent Intel Xeon processors, thus allowing customers more choice and flexibility in their purchasing decisions.

TABLE 1. ANSYS v11.0 "Standard" Benchmark Test Suite
Results are total elapsed run times in seconds (smaller is better)

• Solution Brief

• Benchmark Results

Four Sun Blade X6250 server modules, each equipped with two dual-core Intel Xeon X5260 CPUs and running 64-bit SuSE Linux (SLES10) OS, have formed an eight CPU cluster that outperforms all results published by other hardware vendors on EXA PowerFLOW benchmark at comparable cluster sizes.

EXA's PowerFLOW CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) application is an MCAE application used by the major engineering companies in a variety of disciplines such as aerospace, automotive and chemical. The EXA PowerFLOW benchmark consists of two compute and memory intensive suites with small and large data sets that model the air flow over a body of a car.

In both cases, the cost-effective solution based on high-performance Sun Blade X6250 servers that were using InfiniBand PCIe ExpressModules interconnected via a Voltaire Grid Director ISR 9096 switch, performs better than competing clusters at the same core count. Additionally, as the below table suggests, the same cluster has also produced stellar results when outfitted with other recent Intel Xeon processors, thus allowing customers more choice and flexibility in their purchasing decisions.

TABLE 1. EXA PowerFLOW V 3.6c Benchmark
Results are total elapsed time in seconds

• Solution Brief

Four Sun Blade X6250 server modules, each equipped with two dual-core Intel Xeon X5260 CPUs and running 64-bit SuSE Linux (SLES10) OS, have formed an eight CPU cluster that demonstrated world record performance on ABAQUS/Explicit, a finite element analysis package that simulates brief transient dynamic events (a.k.a. crashes and high velocity impacts).

The ABAQUS/Explicit benchmark suite includes a combination of six high-speed dynamic impact events like projectile penetration or a car crash, and quasi-static events with complicated contact conditions like forming a part out of a blank metal sheet. The benchmark is intended to provide an estimate of the performance that can be expected when running representative ABAQUS analysis jobs on different computer platforms.

In all six cases the Sun Blade X6250-based cluster using InfiniBand PCIe ExpressModules interconnected via a Voltaire Grid Director ISR 9096 switch, performs better than competing clusters at the same core count. Additionally, as the below table suggests, the same cluster has also produced stellar results when outfitted with other recent Intel Xeon processors, thus allowing customers more choice and flexibility in their purchasing decisions.

TABLE 1. ABAQUS/Explicit v6.7 Benchmark with four Sun Blade X6250 server modules
Results are Total Elapsed Time in seconds

• Solution Brief

• Benchmark Results

Four Sun Blade X6250 server modules, each equipped with two dual-core Intel Xeon X5260 CPUs and running 64-bit SuSE Linux (SLES10) OS, have formed an eight CPU cluster that demonstrated world record performance on one of the most popular high velocity impact (a.k.a. "crash") analysis applications LS-DYNA. Sun's cluster surpassed all published results, ranging from one to 8 CPUs, that were posted on topcrunch.org web site, while maintaining superb scalability with the increasing size of the cluster.

The TopCrunch benchmark was created with the objective of tracking the aggregate performance trends of high performance computer systems. Instead of relying upon synthetic workloads, it was built upon an LS-DYNA application that reflects the types of calculations performed in the mechanical and aerospace communities and is used for crash simulation and analysis. The benchmark consists of two standardized problems: "Neon_Refined" and a much larger "3 Vehicle Collision". These problems were chosen to reflect current engineering practices in the real world and are not intended to be optimal, because engineers rarely have time to optimize their analysis in real life.

The Sun Blade X6250-based cluster using InfiniBand PCIe ExpressModules interconnected via Voltaire Grid Director ISR 9096 switch, performs better than competing clusters at the same core count. Specifically, the Sun Blade X6250-based cluster beats a similarly equipped IBMBladeCenter HS21 XM-based cluster on "3 Vehicle Collision" problem by an average of 30%. Moreover, as evidenced in the table below, Sun's solution maintained 85% scalability efficiency despite the non-linear scalability nature inherent in these sub-optimal engineering codes.

TABLE 1. LS-DYNA "Topcrunch" benchmark
4 x Sun Blade X6250 server modules, 2 x Intel Xeon 5260, 16 GB RAM, 64-bit SLES10 OS

• Solution Brief

• Benchmark Results

Four Sun Blade X6250 server modules, each equipped with two dual-core Intel Xeon X5260 CPUs and running 64-bit SuSE Linux (SLES10) OS, have formed an eight CPU cluster that demonstrated outstanding performance on one of the most popular MCAE applications - FLUENT. The software solves fluid flow problems, is based on a numerical technique called computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and is heavily used in the automotive, aerospace and consumer products industries.

FLUENT offers two benchmarking suites that have distinctly different sets of problems incorporated into them. The "Standard" FLUENT v6.3 benchmark test suite consists of nine industrial CFD applications that are selected to demonstrate the performance of FLUENT on a variety of hardware platforms. The problems are divided into three varying in size classes: Small, Medium and Large.

The "New" FLUENT v6.3 benchmark test suite consists of seven larger models (both in memory requirements and mesh/model size) that are more suited for multi-node clustered environments and representative of modern engineering CFD clusters. Vendors benchmark their systems with the principal objective of providing comparative performance information for FLUENT software that, among other things, depends on compilers, optimization, interconnect, and the performance characteristics of the hardware.

According to the results that are listed on the above web sites, Sun's solution, using InfiniBand PCIe ExpressModules interconnected via Voltaire Grid Director ISR 9096 switch, performs better than competing clusters at the same core count. Specifically, the Sun Blade X6250-based cluster beats the similarly equipped IBM System x3550-based cluster on the "Standard" suite by as much as 64%, and an Intel quad-core whitebox-based cluster on the "New" suite by as much as 85%. Additionally, the average scalability efficiency of Sun's offering stayed above 90%, as the cluster grew in size up to the maximum of 8 cores, while IBM's average scalability was closer to 80%.

TABLE 1. Fluent v6.3 "Standard" benchmark
4 x Sun Blade X6250 server modules, 2 x Intel Xeon 5260, 16 GB RAM, 64-bit SLES10 OS

TABLE 2. Fluent v6.3 New benchmark
4 x Sun Blade X6250 server modules, 2 x Intel Xeon 5260, 16 GB RAM, 64-bit SLES10 OS

• Solution Brief

• Benchmark Results - "Standard" suite

• Benchmark Results - "New" suite

Operating system (OS) and compiler software often help to deliver the best performance by providing optimizations tailored to a specific hardware platform or microprocessor architecture.

Solaris 10 OS and Sun Studio 12 complier software, use many innovative optimization techniques targeted at x86 platforms. Sun's software running on the top of the Intel-based system architecture, propelled the Sun Blade 6250 server module to the top with the best 4-core result on integer-intensive throughput suite of the SPECcpu2006 benchmark. Equipped with two Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5160 processors, the Sun Blade X6250 server module, posted the SPECint_rate2006 result of 65.0.

The SPEC CPU2006 Benchmark exercises a computer's processor, memory architecture, and compilers on a variety of real-world compute intensive workloads and consists of two benchmark suites. One suite measures and compares compute-intensive integer performance and the other measures and compares floating point performance. For each of these suites, two metrics are collected, one measures how fast the computer completes a single task and the other measures how many tasks a computer can accomplish in a certain amount of time (the throughput).

• Press Release

• Benchmark Results

Sun's new Intel-based system, the Sun Blade X6250 server module enters the market with an attention-grabbing SPECint2006 result of 21.0.

The SPEC CPU2006 Benchmark exercises a computer's processor, memory architecture, and compilers on a variety of real-world compute intensive workloads and consists of two benchmark suites. One suite measures and compares compute-intensive integer performance and the other measures and compares floating point performance. For each of these suites, two metrics are collected, one measures how fast the computer completes a single task and the other measures how many tasks a computer can accomplish in a certain amount of time.

Operating system (OS) and compiler software often help to deliver the best performance by providing optimizations tailored to a specific hardware platform or microprocessor architecture. The advanced features of freely available Sun Studio 12 complier software allowed Sun Blade 6250 to successfully claim the top spot on a single integer task of the SPECcpu2006 benchmark. Equipped with the Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5160 processor, the Sun Blade X6250 server module uses many innovative optimization techniques targeted at x86 platforms that are inherent in Solaris 10, the most advanced OS on the planet.

• Press Release

• Benchmark Results