Sun Blade X6275 Server Module

The Sun Blade X6275 server module, designed for serious HPC workloads outshines the competition and delivers the best-ever single task floating point and integer performance.

Each Sun Blade X6275 server module has two full-function compute nodes, each with two Intel Xeon processors, up to 96 GB of high-speed memory, integrated IB QDR Host Channel Adapter (HCA) and Gigabit Ethernet, optional Sun Flash Module, and optional PCIe ExpressModule I/O. The configurability of the system ensures that each node within the blade module can most efficiently run compute-intensive, memory-intensive, communication-intensive or I/O-intensive applications, so customers can address more diverse HPC workloads.

Using just one node within the Sun Blade X6275 server module, Sun's advanced design delivers ultimate compute performance with two Intel Xeon 5500 series processors and OpenSolaris OS by setting world speed records for both integer and floating point on the industry-standard SPEC CPU 2006 benchmark.

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 (the speed) and the other measures how many tasks a computer can accomplish in a certain amount of time (the throughput).

Benchmark Outcome

• The innovative and integrated design of this system, in combination with OpenSolaris 2009.06 and Sun Studio 12 Update 1 software — Sun's freely available development tool for the Solaris OS and Linux — allowed one node within the Sun Blade X6275 server module (8 cores/2 chips/16 threads) to produce the record-breaking SPECint2006 score of 37.4 and the SPECfp2006 result of 50.8.
• The compound effect of using the most advanced Intel Xeon X5500 series processors in conjunction with the latest versions of OS and compiler software, the OpenSolaris 2009.06 and the Sun Studio 12 Update 1, respectively, propelled the Sun Blade X6275 server module to the top positions on the compute-intensive SPEC CPU 2006 benchmark.
• In addition to utilizing the freely available community-based version of the OS — OpenSolaris 2009.06, the latest version of Sun Studio compiler software was used to achieve these outstanding scores. The Sun Studio 12 Update 1 software contains new features and enhancements to boost performance and simplify the creation of high-performance parallel applications for the latest multicore x86 and SPARC-based systems running on leading Linux platforms, the Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS) or OpenSolaris™.
• The SPEC CPU2006 benchmark provides a broad variety of workloads such as protein sequencing, MPEG-4 decoding, XML processing, structural mechanics and speech recognition.
• The advanced features incorporated in the community-based OpenSolaris 2009.06 OS allowed Sun's system to surpass competitive systems that were running at a higher CPU clock frequency.
• OpenSolaris 2008.11 and the Sun Studio 12 Update 1 compiler software used to produce this result are available for download free of charge at www.sun.com/download.
• The Sun Studio 12 Update 1 software has set almost a dozen industry benchmark records to date, and in conjunction with OpenSolaris 2009.06 OS was instrumental in landing these new ground-breaking SPEC CPU2006 results.

• Press Release

Designed for ultimate throughput and density, the dual-node Sun Blade X6275 server module combines the compute capacity of four Intel Xeon 5500 series processors with OpenSolaris OS to deliver better performance than any other blade, setting world records for both integer and floating point throughput.

Each Sun Blade X6275 server module has two full-function compute nodes, each with two Intel Xeon processors, up to 96 GB of high-speed memory, integrated IB QDR Host Channel Adapter (HCA) and Gigabit Ethernet, optional Sun Flash Module, and optional PCIe ExpressModule I/O. The configurability of the system ensures that the same blade module can run compute-intensive, memory-intensive, communication-intensive or I/O-intensive applications, so customers can address more diverse HPC workloads.

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).

Benchmark Outcome

• Innovative and integrated design of this system, in combination with OpenSolaris and Sun Studio 12 Update 1 software — Sun's freely available development tool for the Solaris OS and Linux — allowed the Sun Blade X6275 server module (16 cores/4 chips/32 threads) to produce the record-breaking SPECint_rate2006 score of 478 and the SPECfp_rate2006 result of 355.
• The compound effect of using the most advanced Intel Xeon X5500 series processors in conjunction with OpenSolaris and the latest version compiler software — the Sun Studio 12 Update 1 — propelled the Sun Blade X6275 server module to the top blade position on SPEC's compute-intensive throughput benchmark.
• Sun utilized the freely available community-based version of the OS — OpenSolaris. Additionally, freely available Sun Studio compiler software that includes the latest features and capabilities, was instrumental in landing this groundbreaking result.
• The SPEC CPU2006 benchmark provides a broad variety of workloads such as protein sequencing, MPEG-4 decoding, XML processing, structural mechanics and speech recognition.
• OpenSolaris 2008.11 and the Sun Studio 12 Update 1 compiler software used to produce this result are available for download free of charge.

• Press Release

The dual-node Sun Blade X6275 server module, powered powered by the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series, is the newest open network system and was designed with ultimate density and performance in mind, the attributes desired by High Performance Computing (HPC) environments.

Each Sun Blade X6275 server module has two full-function compute nodes, each with two Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series, up to 96 GB of high-speed memory, integrated IB QDR Host Channel Adapter (HCA) and Gigabit Ethernet, optional Sun Flash Module, and optional PCIe ExpressModule I/O. The configurability of the system ensures that the same blade module can run compute-intensive, memory-intensive, communication-intensive or I/O-intensive applications, enabling customers to address more diverse HPC workloads.

The SPEC OMP benchmark includes workloads often used in high-energy physics, weather modeling, computational chemistry, and mechanical design, and consists of medium- and large-problem sets that stress the computer's processor, memory, compilers and OpenMP implementation.

On a very popular medium problem set of this HPC benchmark, the Sun Blade X6275 server module delivered a new x86 world record showing off the multi-threaded scalability of the system, stability of OpenSolaris 2008.11 OS and Studio 12 Update 1 compiler's support for OpenMP.

Benchmark Outcome

• On the medium problem set of SPECompM2001 benchmark, the versatile Sun Blade X6275 server module, equipped with two Intel Xeon X5570 processors and running OpenSolaris 2008.11, posted the best x86 result.
• Sun Blade X6275 server module (8 cores/2 chips/16 OMP threads) delivered a SPECompM2001 result of 48,097, using Sun Studio 12 Update 1 software that consists of performance tools, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and C, C++, and Fortran compilers.
• Sun's x86 systems have been dominant on High Performance Computing (HPC) compute-intensive workloads using superior compiler software that delivers the best performance by providing optimizations tailored to a specific hardware platform or microprocessor architecture.
• Sun utilized the freely available community-based version of the OS — OpenSolaris. Additionally, freely available Sun Studio compiler software that includes the latest features and capabilities, was instrumental in landing this groundbreaking result.
• The Sun Blade X6275 server module produced a SPECompMbase2001 result of 43,777, beating Cisco B200-M1 server (8 cores/2 chips/16 OMP threads) that was running Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS, using Intel® Compiler 11.0 and posted a score of 43,593.
• Moreover, compared to the system equipped with the previous generation of Intel Xeon processors, the Sun Blade X6275 server module offers 1.9x better performance on SPECompM2001 benchmark, as evident by SPECompM2001 score of 17,195 recorded on Sun Fire X2250 server (8 cores/2 chips/8 OMP threads), equipped with two Intel Xeon X5482 CPUs.

• Press Release